LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 



Five Redeemers. 



.BY 

V 

M. J. BARNETT, 

Author of m Practical Metaphysics," " The New- 
Biology," Etc. 



■: 




BOSTON : 

H. H. CARTER & COMPANY, 

No. 3 Beacon Street. 

189O. 



if 



Copyright, 1890, 
By M. J. BARNETT. 



All Rights Reserved. 



Typography by J. S. Cushing & Co., Boston. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



Preface . 5 

CHAP. 

I. Mothers .9 

II. Teachers 50 

III. Employers 91 

IV. Artists 123 

V. Priests 143 

3 



PREFACE. 



In all ages of the world there have been those 
who, by a mistaken way of living, have run them- 
selves spiritually into debt, and they have needed 
one who was spiritually rich to advance and re- 
deem their estate, to help them regain their well- 
nigh lost inheritance. 

There have been certain periods in which the 
great majority in certain parts of the world were 
thus impoverished, and a great universal redeemer 
seemed their only salvation. 

As soon as we have a spiritual need, that need 
is sure to be supplied. 

When the Persians needed a spiritual teacher, 
Zoroaster was the response to that need. When 
the fourth part of the inhabitants of the globe 
comprised in the Chinese Empire stood in need 
of a new moral and spiritual stimulus, Confucius 
was sent to them. At various times, when cer- 
tain peoples of Asia degenerated into ignorance 

5 



6 PREFACE. 

and vice, a Buddha or Wise One, appeared among 
them as their redeemer. When the people of 
Judea and the surrounding countries had become 
so material that they had lost the spirit of even 
their own laws, Jesus, the Christ, was sent to 
teach and redeem them. 

Whatever of pure truth is contained in the 
teachings of any and all of these conspicuous 
redeemers, who have appeared at various epochs 
of the world, is truth intended to redeem us 
to-day; and any one who can help us in the 
work of gleaning out from among superadded 
falsities any of this precious truth is also, though 
it may be in a lesser degree, our saviour, our 
redeemer. 

Although it is true that we must each, in the 
strictest sense, be our own redeemer yet we can 
be so aided in our redemption that it would 
seem as though, if left to ourselves, we would 
surely be lost. But we never are and never are 
going to be left to ourselves when we need help. 
The Ruler of the Universe knows our needs and 
finds a means of supplying them. If our souls 
cry out for help, the help is at hand in immediate 
response to our cry. 



PREFACE. 7 

If we follow the teachings of the latest and, 
as we think, the most exalted Redeemer that 
has even been given to the world, we shall be 
redeemers to one another. He taught us to be 
precisely what He was, a Redeemer, a Teacher, 
a Healer. 

If at any time we can help a fellow-being pay 
off his debts and regain his estate unencumbered 
with ignorance and sin, it is our duty to go forth 
bravely and intelligently into the work. As we 
cannot all work in the same way, we must each 
discover our own best way. 

From our entrance into this present life until 
our departure from it, we are to some degree 
under the influence of those more enlightened 
than ourselves. These enlightened ones are our 
saviours in the only sense in which any one other 
than ourselves can be our saviours. If, after 
we were once taught truth and set upon the right 
track, in the beginning, we adhered strictly to 
that truth, we should need no redeemer, for there 
would be nothing to redeem, there would be no 
work to be undone ; we should need only more 
and more teaching. As it is, however, we are 
constantly stumbling along the way, turning into 



8 PREFACE. 

wrong and rough paths, therefore we need a 
friendly hand to save us from a fall or to raise 
us up when we are prostrate. 

Blessed is he who recognizes and welcomes all 
redeemers, all dispensers of truth, in whatever 
guise these enlightened ones may present them- 
selves, for he thus finds his salvation. Still more 
blessed is he, who has himself become a saviour 
of his fellow-beings, for, with no thought of his 
own salvation, he is surely saved. They who 
preach the gospel live of the gospel. They who 
dispense good receive good. 



THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

CHAPTER I. 

MOTHERS. 

In our divine essence, we all, men and women 
alike, contain within ourselves the male and fe- 
male principles. We have an intellectual and an 
aff ectional nature, which, when we become rounded 
out, enable us to be not only fathers and brothers, 
but mothers and sisters to our fellow-beings. A 
full and perfect development of our whole being 
includes all possible human relationships, as an 
outcome of our divine kinship with our Creator, 
in whose image and likeness we are. 

The boy who does not voluntarily guide the 
steps of the child younger and weaker than him- 
self, and protect him from harm, and teach him 
how to be strong, and initiate him into the mys- 
teries of his own pleasures and pursuits, is a boy 

9 



IO THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

who simply has not yet developed the holy germ 
of fatherhood that is latent within him. 

The man who does not enjoy giving physical 
support, and intellectual aid, and moral strength 
to those who are weaker and more ignorant than 
himself, is a man who has mislaid one of the 
highest possibilities of his nature, — that of father- 
hood. 

The girl who does not offer love and tender- 
ness, and whisper the comforting secrets of her 
own inner nature to those who seem troubled or 
helpless, — though they may be her pets among 
animals, or even the pasteboard dolls she presses 
to her bosom, — is a girl who has not yet dis- 
covered the divine inheritance of motherhood 
that is surely hers. 

The woman who can go through this world 
and not twine her arm around those who are 
fainting, and not take into her heart those who 
need love, and not sustain and nourish those who 
hunger, and not shed the light of her spirit upon 
those who walk in darkness, is a woman who has 
ignored the intention of her being in sacred 
motherhood, who has become a travesty of that 
noble work of God, a true woman. 



MOTHERS. I I 

A man to be wholly and truly a man must to 
some degree have developed the fatherhood with- 
in him, just as a woman to be wholly and truly 
a woman must have developed the motherhood 
within her. 

If one part of God's creation could be said to 
be more important than another, we would say 
that a mother is more important than a father. 
A mother being more closely related to the 
spiritual interests of her offspring or her adopted 
children among her fellow-beings, her work is the 
higher and more sacred work. 

When one is admitted to membership in a col- 
lege, he is said to be matriculated. That society 
extends her arms to shelter him. She gives him 
comfort and sustenance. She takes him into 
her heart and he becomes her child. And she, 
although she acts a father's part in giving him 
wisdom, still more becomes his mother. 

If we could say that God, who is necessary to 
every avenue of our being, is more important to 
us in one capacity than in another, we would, 
with all reverence, say that he does more for us 
as a mother than as a father; but in him the 
two are never separated, and the nearer we draw 



12 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

unto him, the more we shall become both father 
and mother to all humanity. 

One of the most evenly and richly developed 
men we know, who lost his father in infancy, said 
that his mother had been both father and mother 
to him. She had unfolded in him both love and 
wisdom. She had arrived at that advanced stage 
of development which enabled her to combine in 
herself the sum of all parental attributes. In her 
race towards the goal she had simply outstripped 
the majority of her fellow-women. 

There are also men who are so developed that 
they are both parents in one. To ascribe essen- 
tially feminine qualities to a man is thought to 
be a belittling of him ; but until a man has, in 
the highest sense of the word, become feminine 
as well as masculine, he is not perfectly devel- 
oped as a man, and more especially as a parent 
to his children. 

There are countless mothers who have never 
in this material life given birth to offspring who 
were flesh of their flesh. The highest elements 
of motherhood reside in the spirit, not in the 
body. Nevertheless, there is a deep meaning in 
physical motherhood. There is in it a grand 



MOTHERS. ■ 13 

significance, which, when rightly interpreted, 
becomes an illuminated text full of the highest 
wisdom. 

Those who have been attracted into our at- 
mosphere, those who have joined our family 
circle, have a special claim upon us. Our chil- 
dren come to us to be cared for by us, and the 
work we ought to do for them can be done by 
no one else. 

The work that a mother can do for her child 
begins before the child is born into this ex- 
istence. In fact, the whole previous career of the 
mother may be regarded as a grand preparation 
for that work and leading directly up to it. 
Just what a mother can do for her child depends 
lipon what she herself is. If, for example, a 
girl at ten years of age begins to conquer a 
spirit of jealousy in herself, and continues the 
good work until she has overcome that error, 
she is eminently fitted as a mother to help her 
child by precept and example to overcome a 
similar fault. All the good spiritual work that 
a mother has, at any time in her previous career, 
done for herself, is, in a broad sense, work done 
for all who may ever thereafter come into her 



14 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

mental sphere ; but more especially is it work done 
for her children, who more than any others are 
under the dominion of her mind. All the good 
that she has taken unto herself is laid up in her 
own spiritual and mental storehouse, but she 
cannot bestow it upon any one until that one 
comes within the sphere of her influence. The 
very moment, however, a child becomes her 
child, she can bestow upon it either good or evil ; 
and this leads us to that most important, much 
discussed, but little understood subject : 

Heredity. 

It is said of a human being that the first seven 
years are the most important period of this life. 
But spiritual science goes still further back, and 
asserts that the first nine months before birth 
comprise the most impressionable and therefore 
the most important period of this life. 

The theosophical view of heredity, as a pos- 
session chiefly of our own acquiring, does not 
in any way lessen the importance of parental 
influence. 

We do not consider that because a person has 
already a character of his own, we can exert 



MOTHERS. x 5 

no influence over him. We do not feel that in 
order to move, persuade, lead, or direct him, he 
must be a newly created blank. We all know 
that over those who come within our thought 
sphere, however decided a character they may 
possess, we can and do exert a powerful influ- 
ence, and the more nearly they come to us inte- 
riorly, and the more our minds are in dominion 
over them, the stronger will be that influence. 

As soon as the child becomes the mother's 
guest, it has entered into her spiritual and men- 
tal sphere, and is wholly under the dominion of 
her mind. The influence of others, even of the 
father, can work upon the child only mediately 
through her. The child may have brought with 
it an inheritance of its own, but it is in the power 
and within the province of the mother to modify 
that inheritance. She can add to it or take 
away from it by means of her spiritual and mental 
states, and not only by her habitual states, but, 
in addition, by those which for a definite purpose 
she is able to induce in herself during the period 
of gestation. 

Spiritual science, instead of denying heredity, 
asserts it most emphatically; but it asserts that 



1 6 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

heredity is spiritual and mental, not physical. It 
asserts that it is by the transfer of thought of 
spiritual and mental conditions that a repetition 
of physical results is rendered possible. 

Neither a physical environment nor a physical 
presence which does not impress itself upon the 
mother's mind can affect the mind of the com- 
ing child, and it would therefore be powerless 
to produce any result in his body. Just to the 
degree and in the way in which a presence does 
impress itself upon her mind, whether such im- 
pression be correct or incorrect, it will tell upon 
the child. 

For illustration, a prospective mother stands 
in mortal fear of a large family dog that some- 
times forces its way into the house. She is 
thinking of this dog, when suddenly the door at 
her back is burst open, and a neighbor's little 
boy rushes into her room. She thinks it is the 
dog, and screams with terror, and falls into a 
swoon. Even after she is restored to conscious- 
ness and is reassured by her friends, her thoughts 
persistently recur to the dog, which she says she 
cannot get out of her mind. Now, if heredity 
were physical and not mental, we would expect 



MOTHERS. 17 

that the child in this case, if he were marked by 
the incident at all, would come into the world 
bearing a resemblance to the little boy who was 
the physical cause of the mother's fright. But 
such is by no means the case. The child's fea- 
tures bear an unpleasant resemblance to those of 
the dog that w r as in the mother's mind, and 
which her imagination pictured so vividly that it 
was really present to her, although physically the 
animal was all the while lying quietly asleep 
under a tree in the garden. 

What an immense field for the working of 
metaphysics this fact presents to us I Our mind 
is our kingdom ; it cannot be alienated from us ; 
we are its monarch to the end. 

If the physical peculiarities of a mother, or 
even of a remote ancestor, are the possession of a 
child, they become so by means of a condition of 
mind in the child. 

Just how much of a child's mental condition is 
the child's own inherent property, and how much 
is gained through the mother's mind, it is not to 
our present purpose to speculate upon. But of 
one thing we may be sure, and that is, if we are 
a prospective mother, there is an immense work 



1 8 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

for us to do, and we are only to do it to the best 

4 

of our ability, without troubling ourselves about 
just how much we are accomplishing. 

It is well known in medical science that physi- 
cal peculiarities do not necessarily come to us in 
the line of flesh and blood relationships, but may 
come from any one in close association with the 
mother. Spiritual science will add that however 
close the physical association with the mother, if 
there is no bond of sympathy in love or fear, if 
there is no influence brought to bear upon the 
mother's mind, there will from that direction be 
no physical peculiarity transferred to the child. 
It is through mind that so-called physical hered- 
ity becomes ours. 

There are curious cases on record of children 
bearing a marked physical and mental resem- 
blance to a former husband of the mother. The 
mother's mind is perhaps little under the domin- 
ion of her present husband's, while her thoughts 
go back and even unconsciously to herself dwell 
on the object of a deeper and stronger attach- 
ment; or, since fear may be as potent as love, 
perhaps the mother at this sensitive period weakly 
yields to a retrospect that revives old fears and 



MOTHERS. 19 

sufferings associated with a former husband, who 
was only an object of dread and dislike. 

What we fear as well as what we love possesses 
our minds and governs our thoughts. 

There are cases of children resembling some 
friend physically separated from the mother by 
mountains and oceans of distance, while these 
children have been totally unlike the relatives 
among whom the mother was physically present. 
In such cases the relatives, though near in body, 
occupied little of the mother's thought, while the 
distant friend was frequently present to her mind. 

Jacob of old displayed his knowledge of this 
metaphysical law in the tending of Laban's flock. 
He presented to the vision of those going to bear 
young certain figures and colors that he wished 
to impress upon their minds in order to have 
them reproduced. 

It is said that there is frequently a close resem- 
blance between the color of an animal and the 
locality in which he lives, caused by the imagina- 
tion when breeding. By changing the surround- 
ings at such times the color of the coming animal 
can be changed at will. The tiger's stripes are 
said to resemble the long jungle grass in which 



20 THE F±VE REDEEMERS. 

he lives, and the leopards spots to resemble the 
speckled light falling through the leaves of the 
forest in which he roams. 

The ancient Greeks understood the impor- 
tance of surrounding a pregnant woman with 
such objects as they desired to gain a hold upon 
her mind and rule her imagination and her 
thoughts. In their inordinate desire for physical 
beauty, they directed all their efforts towards 
keeping before the mind of the woman such per- 
fect models of the human form, in painting and 
statuary, as they wished to see reproduced in her 
child. They were metaphysical as far as they 
went. Their efforts were not in vain ; but, un- 
fortunately, working with a view only to exter- 
nals, and failing to hold moral beauty above 
physical beauty and as the primal cause of which 
physical beauty is the effect, they transmitted to 
their offspring so unstable an inheritance that 
even physical decline followed upon the moral 
decay of the nation, and both mind and body 
sank in the general ruin. 

Beautiful thought will in time create a beauti- 
ful body, even though it may not be directed to 
that external effect. 



MOTHERS. 2 1 

Thought rules the universe. 

If prospective mothers could realize that the 
minutest flashes of thought and feeling in which 
they indulge all bear their part in making up 
the grand sum total of the inheritance they are 
transmitting to their children, they would keep 
watch over their hearts and minds with more dili- 
gence than they would guard their most costly 
jewels. They would, at this period as at no 
other time, be fully alive to their responsibility 
for the welfare of another being, and instead of 
yielding more readily to any temptation, any 
weakness, or error that might assail them, they 
would feel it their bounden duty to make the 
most strenuous effort to overcome evil. They 
would not only abstain from positive vice, but 
they would also rise up out of a condition of neg- 
ative error. They would, like sentinels at their 
post, see to it that innocent sleep — in the form 
of indifference — crept not upon them unawares 
to endanger the safety of others. 

The monstrous and illogical error, that a preg- 
nant woman is to some degree morally irrespon- 
sible, is one which, in spite of its enormity, not 
only reaches back into past centuries, but flour- 



2 2 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

ishes among all civilized nations to-day. Why 
should a woman in that condition be morally 
irresponsible ? She is neither insane nor imbe- 
cile of necessity from her condition. Why should 
fulfilling one of the most natural and one of the 
noblest offices of womanhood weaken the mind 
or destroy the moral sense ? An indulgence in 
only what is unnatural and ignoble could possibly 
have such an effect as that. 

There is a law of Italy forbidding the arrest of 
a pregnant woman who has stolen food. Now, 
while the arrest of a person may not be the 
method best adapted for correcting evil tenden- 
cies in mind, yet the making of an exception in 
such a case, in this legal and public sanction of 
dishonesty as a supposed necessity, emphasizes 
and strengthens the revolting error. 

A woman during the period of gestation, in- 
stead of feeling that she is thereby licensed to 
indulge in evil, should vigorously resist, not only 
every impure or dishonest act, but even every 
such desire or thought, lest it injure, not alone 
herself, but also that other to whom it is trans- 
mitted, perhaps to be handed down to posterity 
indefinitely. 



MOTHERS. 23 

Why is there so much dishonesty and crime 
enacted in the world? Because dishonesty and 
crime are nourished in mind, and they are fre- 
quently nourished and perpetuated in minds that 
have not originally produced these conditions, but 
have only received them as an inheritance and 
have been too ignorant or weak to overcome them. 

A pregnant woman, like any other woman or 
any other person, not only should not desire what 
belongs to another, but she should not permit 
herself to desire and dwell upon what she can- 
not obtain, or even what is not right or expedient 
for her to try to obtain. She should employ a 
thousand times more effort to direct her thoughts 
into a right channel than if she were the only 
one concerned. 

When we desire a change of pictures upon the 
wall, we change the slides in the magic lantern. 
If a mother does not wish evil to be imprinted 
upon the mind of her child, let her remove the 
evil from her own mind. 

With a sincere desire to resist evil, all evil can 
be resisted. A woman is no more cut off from 
the divine source of strength while she is in that 
sensitive condition than at any other time. On 



24 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

the contrary, — the winds being tempered to the 
shorn lamb, — if her necessity is greater, God 
draws still nearer to her. That is, by her necessity 
and desire she is enabled to draw still nearer to 
the fountain of all strength. 

She does not realize into what danger for her- 
self and another she is being led, when she per- 
mits her mind to cling to an unattainable object 
of her desire. 

Why is it that in grape countries there are so 
many wine marks upon the people ? Wine is by 
them considered not only desirable, but positively 
necessary to health, and prospective mothers who 
are too poor to indulge in it permit themselves 
to desire it, or those who desire it at an untimely 
or inconvenient hour permit their minds to dwell 
upon it. The desire in either case being unsatis- 
fied, and the thoughts continuing to dwell upon 
it, these reiterated thoughts imprint themselves 
upon the mind of the child, and are reflected 
upon his body. The physical blemish thus pro- 
duced is, however, much less to be lamented than 
the less manifest moral effect, which is a love of 
intoxicating drink or a disposition to covet the 
unattainable, or perhaps both. 



MOTHERS. 25 

It is curious to note how this widespread 
belief that wine is a necessity and water injurious 
extends itself to travellers who visit these wine 
countries. It has no foundation in truth. If 
water is impure, let it be purified. If strangers 
in the Italian cities, for example, would employ 
as much effort in getting the pure water that can 
somewhere be found flowing from pure fountains 
as they devote to getting pure wine, or one-tenth 
as much as they spend in their distracting search 
for curiosities, they would enlist an ally to health 
instead of to fever. If those who, for instance, 
visit Florence with its many wells of bad water, 
would seek the few fountains of pure water, the 
result would be of more value to them than the 
best wine of a thousand vintages. 

It is truly astonishing how easily we yield our- 
selves up to the inoculation of error. 

It is said that you should give a prospective 
mother just what she desires, in order that her 
child may escape unharmed. Now, we do not 
believe that an evil indulged in is ever without 
an injurious effect, even if there be no external 
mark upon the child. When there is no mani- 
fest harm done in such cases, it is because the 



26 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

mother's desires, as soon as gratified, are silenced, 
and her mind turned away to something else. 
But may not this quieting of the desires, this 
turning away of the thoughts, be accomplished by 
fair means as well as by foul? Would not the 
result be far better if the means employed to 
accomplish such a purpose were in accordance 
with divine law instead of in direct opposition 
to it? 

If a child cries because he cannot strike his 
playmate, do we quiet his desire by letting him 
strike the blow, or do we do so by helping him 
overcome his wrong desire ? It is quite likely 
that if he were permitted to gratify his malice 
he would cease crying, and perhaps even be- 
come amiable; but such amiability would be 
only the thin covering of a pitfall into which 
he would at some future time be sure to sink, 
and it would be less desirable than an unhappy 
mood. 

It is not enough merely to turn our thoughts 
away from evil ; but the evil must be conquered, 
and the thoughts turned to something good. 

If a mother would not bring into the world an 
impatient or fretful child, let her cultivate pa- 



MOTHERS. . 27 

tience and tranquillity within herself. Her own 
regeneration will induce a right generation of off- 
spring. If generation were perfect, there would 
be no need of regeneration. When a piece of 
work is well done, it does not need to be done 
over again. But if we have not come into this 
life with all the advantages of a perfect inheri- 
tance, we can nevertheless do our utmost towards 
supplying that lack for those whom we attract to 
this mortal plane, so that the world may the 
sooner arrive at a condition in which perfect 
generation will be the rule instead of the excep- 
tion. 

Our offspring, like ourselves, have all capabil- 
ities and all talents within them, and we can aid 
their development by cultivating our own abil- 
ities in any desired direction. 

We know of a mother who desired above all 
things that her coming child should possess a 
talent for music ; so, instead of merely directing 
to the child her desires to that end, she culti- 
vated music in herself. She listened to the best 
music accessible, and took lessons in singing 
until within a few days of the birth of her child. 
That child possessed not only a marked talent 



28 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

for music, but an inclination to painstaking and 
study that ensured success in that science. 

You may say that you have no talent for 
music, but you desire your child to have that 
talent. Then make an effort to unfold the lit- 
tle ability you have, and bring yourself in con- 
tact with the talent of others, and your child 
will perhaps have ten times your ability, and a 
disposition to cultivate that ability, which will 
place him on the road to talent, as talent is only 
highly developed ability. 

When we become perfectly developed, all tal- 
ents which are within us will become manifest 
externally. 

You sometimes hear of those who, late in life, 
to the surprise of all their friends, have displayed 
a certain talent. Now, they did not catch this 
ability in the way of contagion, nor did they take 
it on as a condition from some one else ; but it 
was all the time within them, only they had not 
turned their attention to it, and brought it out so 
that it 'became manifest to others. 

Although physical beauty and intellectual and 
artistic attainments are both pleasing and desira- 
ble, yet it should be a mother's highest aim to 



MOTHERS. 29 

help her children to an inheritance in spiritual 
graces, without which happiness is impossible. 

How many people of marked talent we know 
who have neither happiness nor bodily health! 
They are morbid, and not because they have tal- 
ent, but in spite of their talent, and because they 
have no rightly poised character behind their tal- 
ent. They have no accompanying spiritual de- 
velopment to round them out into a more evenly 
unfolded and harmonious being. 

Talent should increase happiness, not detract 
from it. 

It is said that a great genius is the most mor- 
bid and unhappy creature in existence. This is 
not so of necessity. When it is so, it is because 
genius is worked for to the neglect of the more 
important spiritual graces. 

It is greater to command one's own spirit than 
to command a musical instrument, or a painters 
colors, or a sculptors clay, though one work 
need never exclude the other. 

With spiritual culture comes faith in the do- 
minion of good over evil. One whose trust is in 
good will be without fear of any harm that evil 
can do her or her offspring. Every prospective 



30 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

mother should so trust in the infinite power of 
good that fear of evil will be ruled out of the 
mind of her child. She should not fear that 
he will come into the world with a morbid or 
unhappy disposition, and she should have no fear 
of those contagious diseases so mistakenly sup- 
posed to be necessarily incident to childhood. 
She will thus infuse into the mind of her child 
that faith which will bring him safely through 
childhood without those diseases. She will nat- 
urally discountenance any such revolting practice 
as vaccination, whereby the body is ingrafted 
with loathsome disease, as if mind in error could 
not entail woes enough on humanity, and it 
must needs be supplemented by material agency 
to extend the territory of .evil. 

We can imagine a metaphysical mother, who, 
desiring above all things to bring into the world 
a metaphysical child, so possesses her own soul 
that she not only denies herself all wrong acts 
and wrong conditions of mind, but induces in 
herself that tranquillity, patience and courage 
which enable her to compass all reasonable desir- 
able things for the child under her dominion. 

The nine months allotted to her are her golden 



MOTHERS. 31 

opportunity. Let her make the most of them. 
After her child enters into this life her exclusive 
reign is over. She must then to some degree 
share him with the rest of the world. Nurses, 
companions, and others at once have access to 
him, and unless the mother carefully interposes 
herself for his protection, he may — like an 
^Eolian harp exposed to the winds — be played 
upon to his injury. 

She may have done her best towards starting 
the child on the right road in this life, but her 
best may have been far from perfect work, or 
there may have been work to do for him that 
could not be accomplished in a given time. Now, 
in the world of externals he may display many 
perverse inclinations and harmful weaknesses 
from which he must be saved, and his mother, his 
first saviour or redeemer, must continue the good 
work she began before his birth. 

It is the greatest mistake in the world for a 
competent mother to give her infant wholly up 
to the keeping of another, and that other perhaps 
a woman or girl of whose character and disposi- 
tion she knows little or nothing. Mothers failing 
to comprehend the working of a silent mental in- 



32 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

fluence, think that until the child can understand 
the import of spoken words he is not subject to 
any mental or moral influence from his nurse, 
and that if her physical duties are well performed 
there is nothing more to take into consideration. 

If a nurse is to be employed, it is of the utmost 
importance that she should be carefully and even 
prayerfully selected from among the many in- 
competent and even harmful workers in that 
field. 

Whatever the character of the nurse may be, — 
and by character we do not mean reputation, — 
the mother should hold the child's mind as much 
as possible in her own keeping, unless she feels 
that the nurse is spiritually higher than herself. 

It is more difficult for a mother to hold undi- 
vided sway over a child's mind when she in 
no way ministers to him materially. While a 
mother's milk, or a mother's touch, may not be 
necessary as a medium to conduct thought to 
the mind of her child, since thought requires no 
material medium to conduct it, yet whoever gives 
nourishment or material service of any kind to 
the child unavoidably gives spiritual and mental 
conditions with it ; and if it is not the mother who 



MOTHERS. 33 

does this, it is some one else who does it. That 
some one else thereby gains access to his interior 
nature and shares him with the mother. 

I^et every mother keep possession of her own 
child unless she is sure that she can yield him up 
into more competent hands. She may not find 
it necessary to supply his every physical need, 
but she should see to it that she keeps him within 
the sphere of her spiritual and mental influence. 

If a mother desires her child to keep warm, she 
does not put him into a cold room and expect 
him to receive the warmth into which he is not 
introduced, but she puts him into the well-warmed 
atmosphere of the nursery, which would bear no 
relation to him if he were not in it. 

A mother may think that she can see very 
little of her child and yet have full dominion over 
him in mind. Now, if this is possible, it is not 
ordinarily the case. In the first place, the mind 
in immediate contact with the child is quite likely 
to be thrown upon him, and prevent the mother's 
mind from reaching him. In the second place, 
when he is not present with her, other persons or 
things are present, and are quite likely to attract 
her attention and possess her thoughts, and a 



34 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

foreign influence thus has opportunity to gain 
ground with him. 

For example, we know that our influence over 
our friend is not so great now that he is leading 
a busy life in China as it was when he was here 
and we were in business together. During his 
busy hours our thoughts may not always reach 
him, for his mind is more occupied with Chinese 
affairs than with anything relating to us, and 
although our affection has not changed, other 
minds have come between us. Then, we our- 
selves are not likely to have him so much in 
our mind as when he was with us. 

It is not that physical presence is necessary in 
order that one mind may act upon another, but 
certain conditions in operator and subject are 
necessary to all mental success, and physical 
presence frequently aids in giving command over 
these conditions. 

We say, then, to every mother, have your child 
with you as much as possible. Let good come 
to him through you. Let evil be warded off 
from him by you. Be the recipient of his little 
woes and joys, for these he will confide to you in 
Nature's language long before he can express them 



MOTHERS. 35 

in words. Every mother understands that lan- 
guage, and can respond to it mentally as well as 
in spoken words. Sometimes a gesture or a 
smile from her is more potent than a thousand 
words ; but that gesture or smile must be the 
outcome of a feeling that is back of it. 

It is difficult to deceive children regarding 
your state of mind towards them. Their intu- 
ition is more unerring than the most highly cul- 
tivated reason. We would not, therefore, advise 
you to act thus and so towards a child ; we would 
only say, love that child, and gain knowledge so 
that your love may express itself wisely instead 
of foolishly. 

Love and wisdom should never be separated. 

As a mother sees to it that the physical 
atmosphere her child inhales is kept clear of 
impurities, so should she see to it that his mental 
and spiritual atmosphere are kept free from bad 
psychical emanations. If she brings around her- 
self those who are in a harmful mental condition, 
she should protect her child by specially holding 
him in truth. She should open the windows of 
his soul and let the heavenly breezes blow in 
upon him and displace the impurities of error, 



36 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

just as she opens the windows of her room that 
the fresh air from without may displace the 
physical impurities within. 

For illustration: the mother of an infant son 
had a frequent visitor in a young girl, who came 
familiarly into the nursery and fondled the babe, 
who was attracted to her. The young girl came 
to pour out her woes, discontent, and repining, 
that she might receive comfort from the cheery 
mother. The mother at length observed that 
after every visit from this girl her child, habit- 
ually sunny in disposition, became fretful and 
unhappy. She finally dreaded to see her friend 
appear, and still more dreaded to see her caress 
the child. What should she do about it ? The 
young girl needed her friendship and she could 
not cast her off. She sought and followed the 
counsel of one wiser than herself. When her 
friend appeared the mother took her child more 
closely into her own mental atmosphere. 

She argued away all the alleged causes for dis- 
content that were set forth by the girl, and as- 
serted that nothing but good could possibly come 
to her. She thus opened a spiritual window, and 
let the pure air of heaven flow in, and she was 



MOTHERS. 37 

shortly rewarded by seeing that not only her 
child was protected, but that the girl herself was 
so benefited that she at length brought with her 
an atmosphere of positive cheerfulness. 

If we would in all cases only think more about 
benefiting others than about protecting ourselves 
or our families, we would learn that our protec- 
tion is generally included in the good we accom- 
plish in working for others. 

There are cases, however, in which a mother 
might not be sufficiently grounded in truth to 
warrant her exposing her child to a harmful 
influence w 7 ith the hope of being able to battle it 
away. 

Children, being passive, and therefore easily 
played upon by outside influences, sometimes 
receive harm from those who are never present 
with them, but only leave their psychical emana- 
tions in some room into which the children are 
admitted. 

We were told of a case of this kind in w 7 hich a 
family of lovely and amiable children suddenly 
became quarrelsome and untruthful. The dis- 
tressed mother at length discovered that this 
change dated from the arrival of a certain un- 



38 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

truthful and wrong-minded seamstress, whom the 
children never saw, but who was in the habit of 
going with her work and sitting by the nursery 
fire while they were out for their daily walk. 
There was but one conclusion to arrive at. The 
bad psychical emanations that the seamstress left 
in the nursery were absorbed by the sensitive 
children. 

The seamstress was discharged, and the children 
regained their former truthfulness and amiability. 

If bad psychical emanations in the spiritual 
atmosphere were as visible to us as the tobacco 
smoke that beclouds the physical air of a room, 
we would not need to be warned concerning 
them ; but, as it is, we for the most part must 
learn of them by their effects. There are, how- 
ever, many among us who are so developed that 
they see these conditions with a clairvoyant vis- 
ion, or they intuitively perceive any antagonistic 
influence, however subtle it may be ; and if their 
condition is one of purity, they are unpleasantly 
affected by the emanations of any one who is in 
an impure mental condition. Children are uncon- 
sciously affected by such influences, and must be 
protected from them by a mother's loving care. 



MOTHERS. 39 

When a child is older, and necessarily goes 
forth among his companions and others, he is 
subject to many influences beyond the mother's 
control. But she can still be his chief control- 
ling influence. She can still be his greatest 
light. When her rightful influence is unceas- 
ingly maintained, it is to her that he will bring 
all the good that he receives outside for con- 
firmation, and all the falsity for denial and de- 
struction. If she sends him forth well fortified 
with truth, falsities can make little or no impres- 
sion upon him. They will glance off from him 
as small shot from the thickest armor. 

If he is upright in character, whatever new ties 
he may form will be such as will only strengthen 
the cords that bind him to his mother. As his 
views of life and his relations to his fellow-beings 
become enlarged, his appreciation of her redeem- 
ing influence will increase. His mother will find 
that she does not lose any of his love, even when 
she shares it with one who has become a part of 
himself, for the wider we extend the circle of our 
love the stronger it becomes. 

Many a young man has felt that he did not 
know the full meaning of the word mother until 



40 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

she who was nearest to him became a mother. 
Then he has perhaps unconsciously dropped the 
word wife, and employed the word mother in its 
stead, feeling that the dear one was even more to 
him in the light of motherhood than in that of 
wifehood. He perhaps feels that when a woman 
becomes a mother, she becomes more complete, 
although he may not realize that as a woman 
becomes more complete she becomes a mother in 
spirit, whether she stands in that physical rela- 
tionship towards any fellow-being or not. 

Even when a child is in an inverted condition, 
and does not seem to care for his mother's love, 
if she gives it to him, he must receive it whether 
he will or not ; and in a condition to care for it 
least, he is in a condition to need it most, just as 
we all need God most when we care for him least. 

The highest mother love which will not be 
tainted with ambition, or a desire for her child's 
mere worldly aggrandizement, will include the 
saving elements of desire for his highest good, 
and faith in his receptivity towards such good ; 
therefore, it must always work for his redemp- 
tion, however tardy may be the external mani- 
festation of such work. 



MOTHERS. 41 

A mother's love is a quickening electric fire 
that enwraps her child however far he may seem 
to have departed from her influence. 

Suppose your child is at this moment in a 
benighted condition of mind and spirit, either 
through the working out of the evil he has in- 
crusted upon himself, or the great mistakes that 
you may feel you have made concerning him, or 
both, the very best and utmost that you can do 
for him is to hold him always within the sphere of 
your love. Be as zealous for his good as though 
you were his only possible redeemer in all the 
great universe. 

A mother sometimes says that her child is 
going to destruction, and she can do nothing 
for him, as he is gone beyond the reach of her 
influence. This is not true. A child cannot get 
beyond the reach of his mothers love. It will 
search him out ; it will find him wherever he may 
be. But let a mother not mingle with that love 
the harmful elements of fear and despair, if she 
would redeem her child from error. She must 
learn to realize that any evil into which he may 
fall is only a temporary condition. He must and 
will, at length, rise up out of it ; if he does not 



42 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

do so through effort, he will do so through 
suffering. 

When the rich man who fared sumptuously 
every day, thinking only of his own happiness, 
had permitted a beggar to lie at his gate and beg 
for the crumbs from his table,- — when this rich man 
lifted up his eyes in hell, when he found himself 
in torment, then he began to realize the enormity 
of his evil. When he had suffered enough he 
began to think of some one else besides himself. 
He who had previously lived only for self began 
now to plead for the welfare of his five brethren. 

There will come a time with every one of us 
when suffering, if not effort, will have raised us 
up into a higher condition. 

Of course you do not want your child to suf- 
fer. Your only possible way to lessen his suffering 
is so to flood him with love, with light, that he 
will be roused up to make an effort to rise above 
the evil that enslaves him. So open the windows 
of his soul by means of your trust in infinite and 
ultimate good, that divine currents will flow in 
upon him, and purify him of his foulness, how- 
ever black it may have become. You are always 
his mother, and can be his redeemer, in however 
revolting a vice he may now be indulging. 



MOTHERS. 43 

How many cases there are on record in which 
after years of vice and misery a child has been 
reformed by means of seed sown by his mother, 
in his apparently barren mind during childhood ! 
Now if such s;ood can be effected where there is 
no special understanding of spiritual law, how 
much more might be accomplished by unceasing 
intelligent spiritual ministration ! 

A mother hears perhaps that an absent son 
has been seen coming out of a den of vice in an 
intoxicated condition. When he left her he was 
pursuing a downward course, and she has heard 
nothing of him for years until these tidings reach 
her. She has hoped that he might reform, but 
she hopes no longer. She feels that he is lost. 
She paints a corresponding picture of him upon 
the canvas of her mind and allows it to remain 
there. Whenever she thinks of him it is as he is 
represented in this picture. She does not realize 
that bv holding on to this view of him she is con- 
stantly sending forth an energy that works to hold 
him related to intoxicating drink, and to dens of 
vice. She should never permit such a picture 
to remain with her for a moment. She should 
set her will and imagination to work to form a 



44 TH E FI VE REDEEMERS. 

contrasting picture of her son, for in that way 
she would be working to relate him to a sphere 
of thought opposed to vice. 

There is no stage of depravity in a child's life 
at which a mother may feel justified in making 
no further effort for his salvation. God never 
gives us up; why should we ever give up one 
another ? A child is never lost ; he has only 
wandered away from the truth for a time. Let a 
mother endeavor to shorten this time and bring 
the wanderer back again sooner than he, in his 
blindness, could come by himself. Let her follow 
the example of the Good Shepherd and always 
work to bring the lost sheep into the fold again. 

Let a mother make home the most attractive 
place in the world, but if a child is in so inverted 
a condition that he prefers vice to virtue and 
strays away from her, let her love reach out after 
him wherever he goes. He may leave her, but 
she must never leave him. 

With a loving and intelligent mother, a child's 
salvation seems almost an accomplished deed. 
But what are we to do with that large class 
of children who have either injurious mothers, 
or incompetent mothers, or no mothers at all ? 



MOTHERS. 45 

Those of us who are fitted for such work and 
love such work — as we must do in order to be 
fitted for it — must become their mothers. We 
must, in some way according to our ability and 
means, do for them the mother work that would 
otherwise be left undone. 

There are many noble women, some with 
ample and others with limited means, who have 
adopted motherless children, and found their 
greatest happiness in rightly unfolding the natures 
of these children. 

There are also other women of means, both 
married and unmarried, engaged in no special life 
work, who are fond of children, and, having none 
of their own, would seem to be the very ones to 
do their share of work in this immense field of 
labor, yet they shrink from it. They are, per- 
haps, almost persuaded to adopt a child, but then 
they find so many objections : Children are such 
a care ; children deprive you of your freedom ; 
to bring up children you need good health ; then 
other people's children may have inherited such 
bad qualities. 

All these objections can be met and success- 
fully argued away in spiritual science. 



46 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

To begin, " Children are such a care." We all 
need and want somebody and something to care 
for. If we love children we love to care for them, 
not in the sense of being anxious about them, for 
the best care of a child is interest and attention 
without anxiety. We heard a lady beautifully ex- 
press it when she said that a child under her super- 
vision was a great care but no trouble whatever. 

Perhaps these very women, who think they are 
not equal to the care of a child, lavish any 
amount of unnecessary interest and attention 
upon a pet dog, which they thereby render only 
artificial and ailing. They love to care for some- 
thing, and they do care for something, but their 
care is worse than wasted, for the little animal is 
only injured by that misplaced interest and atten- 
tion, for which some poor little human waif is 
pining. We believe in a natural education or 
development of animals, but not in an injurious 
pampering of them. 

" Children deprive you of your freedom." One 
who loves children wants them to enter, as much 
as is fitting, into all her plans in life. She does 
not feel that they fetter her movements, for she 
does not want to make any important movements 



MOTHERS. 47 

in which they are not included. If our plans in 
life refer exclusively to ourselves, we have not yet 
learned the meaning of the word freedom. Self- 
ishness is not freedom, but slavery. 

" To bring up children you need good health. ,, 
Most certainly you need good health for any 
important work. If, however, you are living in 
harmony with divine law, there is no reason why 
you should not have health, and one of the surest 
means to gain health, if you lack it, is the pursu- 
ance of some noble life work for which you are 
adapted. We have known the adoption of a 
child so to rouse up a woman's mind to noble 
effort that she speedily became healed of her 
bodily infirmities. The fulfilment of duty should 
never have upon the body any other effect than 
that of giving an increase of health, and it never 
will do so if it is accompanied with trust in the 
supremacy of good over evil. 

" Other people's children may have inherited 
such bad qualities." Undoubtedly, they may; 
but as an important part of our duty in this life 
is to overcome and destroy our bad inheritances, 
and to help others to overcome theirs, we ought 
not to shrink from undertaking such work The 



48 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

worse a child's heredity, the more he needs us, 
who are in the light, to help him overcome it. 
Spiritual science recognizes nothing fatalistic in 
heredity, but tells us that it can always, by suffi- 
cient effort, be overcome. We have known those 
who were successful and happy in the work of 
developing the nature of a child who had traits 
of character unpleasantly foreign to their own. 

So many women are, at this very moment, 
pining in spirit and declining in health, from the 
lack of something to do, some work for which 
they are adapted, and which is important enough 
to bring into exercise their highest powers. Both 
happiness and health await them in some work, 
which perhaps only a few groundless fears pre- 
vent them from undertaking. They need to 
exorcise these evil spirits in the guise of fears, by 
a cultivation of trust. If we undertake any noble 
work with a desire and an intention to benefit a 
fellow-being, we have no ground for fear. We 
shall be provided with all necessary means. It 
is not the work that in such cases harms us, but 
it is our lack of confidence in God's willingness 
and ability to protect us in the midst of wisely 
directed effort for the welfare of others. 



MOTHERS. 49 

We need not, however, all of us who are child- 
less become adopted mothers in order to do our 
share of mother work, for that part of the work 
which seems to fall in with our line of duty 
may be very limited. It may consist only in 
teaching the young a certain number of hours a 
day, or even a week. It may consist of the care 
of a child, or children, during some special exi- 
gency; or in hospitality to young persons sus- 
ceptible to our influence ; or in rare visits among 
young people on whom we can shed light. It 
may consist only in that broader but less en- 
croaching work, in which all women, whatever be 
their occupation, can engage, viz., that of bestow- 
ing a kind, motherly spirit upon young persons, 
of giving them words and thoughts of counsel 
and encouragement, and of throwing a mantle of 
charity over all their misdeeds. 

If women were inspired with the divine spirit, 
they could not help .assuming the true mpther 
attitude whenever and wherever any possible 
good might result from so doing. Whatever 
might be their engrossing life work, they would 
unconsciously shed abroad the protective love 
and tenderness of our divine Father and Mother. 



CHAPTER II. 



TEACHERS. 



Parents and teachers should be one in pur- 
pose. As a parent should always be a teacher, 
so a teacher should always work with the loving 
spirit of a true parent. 

The word teacher is a very broad word, and as 
such includes all the spiritual and intellectual as 
well as the greater part of the material workers 
of the world. In its most limited sense, as one 
who unfolds or develops the powers latent in 
youth, a teacher should be a supplement to the 
mother. A teacher should be an additional 
worker for the child's unfoldment and redemp- 
tion; not to unfold only one small part of the 
child's capabilities, not to redeem him from only 
intellectual errors, but to unfold his whole nature, 
and to redeem him from all error. A teacher 
should not give merely a book knowledge of 
material things, as if a pupil were a creature with 
no divine spirit, and one whose ultimate life was 
50 



TEACHERS. 5 1 

in matter ; but he should endeavor to unfold the 
highest possibilities of his pupil. 

The education of the young is, in this material 
age, a one-sided education, in which their very 
highest faculties are not taken into considera- 
tion. 

If we see a man with his arms abnormally 
developed, while his legs are dwindled away and 
powerless, we pity that man as a deformity. Yet 
what more pitiable deformity can we find than 
that of one who, through ignorance of the laws 
of natural growth and development, has been so 
unfolded as to have become an intellectual giant 
and a spiritual pigmy ? 

How substantial at best is that mighty potency 
called intellect? An over-exertion of its powers, 
— to which it is always liable without the ballast 
of a spiritual culture, — and it topples over ; and 
what was once a grand intellect becomes a mere 
chaos of mad fancies. 

How reliable are the discoveries of the intel- 
lect unaided by higher faculties ? 

There could be no better illustration of the 
pitiable futility of material science for discoveries 
in the realm of causation than that afforded by 



52 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

the post mortem examination of that wonder- 
fully developed man, Washington Irving Bishop. 
Did the scientific butchers, when they, with in- 
decent haste, applied the knife before there was 
any infallible proof that the spirit had been 
wholly withdrawn from the body, — did they in 
their examination of the gray matter of the brain 
expect to come upon the cause of those abnormal 
powers exhibited by the living personality? Did 
they expect to find the secret of a spiritual devel- 
opment wrapped up in the convolutions of the 
brain ? The cause for which they were so igno- 
rantly searching in the realm of matter was to be 
found only in the kingdom of spirit, whence the 
real being with his psychical unfoldment had — 
upon the application of the scalpel, if not before, 
— departed. 

A first cause in spirit is above the aim of 
material science, and beyond the unaided powers 
of the greatest intellect. 

That which the most highly cultured intellect 
discovers and decides upon as truth in one age, 
it is called upon to deny and denounce in another 
age. The best intellects of one period discovered 
the earth to be a flat surface, and the best intel- 



TEACHERS. 53 

lects of a later period discovered that theory to 
be a false one. 

Scientific theories do not always wait for a 
succeeding age to contradict them. Galileo sub- 
jected himself to insult and imprisonment by 
declaring that the earth moved around the sun, 
when his compatriots were fixed in the opinion 
that the sun moved around the earth. A learned 
professor of Padua, after beholding through the 
telescope the new planets discovered by this great 
astronomer, declared that as they were invisible 
to the naked eye they were useless, and therefore 
did not exist. To what sophistries great minds 
will lend themselves ! 

So-called men of science, those who fix their 
gaze on matter and gain what they call knowl- 
edge by their physical senses and their intellect, 
seem to learn nothing from the blunders of the 
great intellects of past ages. Their self-satisfying 
conclusion regarding their predecessors is that 
they were unripe and ignorant, while they them- 
selves have reached the ultimate of truth. They 
fail to apply their logic to their own case, and 
inferentially to behold their supposed knowledge 
crumbling beneath the blows of future ages. 



54 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

Intellect when left to work alone is a most 
delusive guide. It persuades itself that it is so 
great, when all the time it is so very small. As 
a servant of the spirit it is perfectly good. In the 
economy of God's creation it is all that it ever 
pretended to be. But when it is misplaced it is 
held up to the same ridicule that a menial w r ould 
be if he usurped the throne and crown of his king. 

The unfolding of the intellectual powers to the 
exclusion of the spiritual possibilities must of 
necessity produce monstrosities. Such monstros- 
ities are every day resulting from the present 
materialistic education of the young. The tender 
germs of true manhood and womanhood are 
choked in the school and the college, and there 
are forced into existence those one-sided beings, 
who are blind not only to the whole world of 
causation, but still more blind to their own de- 
formity, their own lack of normal development. 
They are readily convertible into the material 
scientist, the learned agnostic, the arrogant, con- 
ceited philosopher of the unknowables, the fash- 
ionable scoffer, the doubter, the unbeliever, the 
denier of all things spiritual, and lastly, the crim- 
inal and the insane. 



TEACHERS, 55 

There is, however, a large class of degraded 
humanity, prominent in all cities and towns, who 
have little access to schools and none to colleges. 
But they readily learn their lessons from their so- 
called betters. They indirectly gain their school 
education. The world is their school. It serves 
as a supplement to the teaching they receive in 
the dens of misery that give them shelter and 
food, if there is any for them. They are apt 
pupils in this, their only college. They learn of 
the business man who over-reaches his customer, 
and the acute lawyer who takes advantage of his 
client, that cleverly managed rascality is more 
admired than a quiet act of beneficence. They 
learn from the intriguing fashionable lady that 
gilded vice is more popular than plain virtue. 
In sum, they learn that mind, and frequently 
perverted mind, not moral sense, rules the world 
to-day, at least, the so-called civilized and Chris- 
tian world. 

Although a perversion of mind ending in crime 
is not the inevitable result of purely intellectual 
culture, yet it most certainly is true that an over- 
estimate of mental ability, and a non-recognition 
of the capabilities of the spirit leave one with no 



56 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

safeguard against his own passions and selfish 
inclinations, and render moral nobility a difficult 
if not impossible achievement. The purely intel- 
lectual man may or may not be depraved, but he 
is never grand, he is never noble, in the highest 
sense of these terms. He may add to the world s 
knowledge of material things something that is of 
value to-day, while we stand in our present rela- 
tion to material things, and he may offer as a 
result of his erudition or research many conclu- 
sions, gratefully received as truth until proved to 
be falsity; but the world could get on without 
him, and in just so far as he turns attention from 
spirit to matter, it could get on better without 
him than with him. The result of his most 
assiduous labor appeals only to that part of his 
fellows which has existence, but no real being. 

On the other hand, the spiritual-minded man is 
a necessity. The world could not get on without 
him. He may be ever so well developed intellec- 
tually ; his spirit and his intellect may and should 
keep equal pace, so as to bear him evenly and 
safely onward in his evolutionary march. His 
whole ministry is an offering to mankind of that 
which they cannot afford to lose, whether they 



TEACHERS. 57 

realize the fact or not. What he has to give, 
however intellectually refined may be its external 
form, contains the essence of everlasting truth, 
and will live among the imperishable, eternal 
verities. 

How important it is, then, that in educating or 
unfolding the capabilities of the young, their 
school as well as their home training should be a 
constant endeavor to unfold the whole of them. 
Or if the work must be one-sided, then let the 
more important work take the precedence ; let the 
development of the spiritual nature be ranked 
above that of the intellect. In a properly con- 
ducted school, one would learn more of morality 
than of mathematics, more of harmony of spirit 
than of history, more of purity of purpose than of 
political economy, more of love to his neighbor 
than of Latin, and more of self-government than 
of all the statistics that material science could fur- 
nish. Such teaching would be religion in its true 
sense, as it would be a rational and useful expla- 
nation of the tie that binds man to his fellow-man 
and to his God. 

We think it wholly unadvisable to have our 
Bible or any other Bible interpreted or — what 



58 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

would more frequently be the case — misinter- 
preted in our common schools, or to have religion 
taught in any of its narrow, sectarian, dogmatic 
forms, in w T hich church or human organization is 
greater than divine truth itself. But to teach a 
child how to place his higher nature in dominion 
over his lower nature, is to give him the highest, 
and at the same time the most practical and eco- 
nomical education possible to man. It is furnish- 
ing him with the tools necessary for successful life 
work, even in this material sphere, as well as with 
qualifications for happiness in his ultimate life 
in spirit. What more than this could any teacher 
do for a child ? Yet no teacher ought to do any- 
thing less than this. 

Under the school system of to-day it would 
doubtless be difficult to accomplish this w r ork in 
all its fulness. We refer more especially to pub- 
lic schools, because in a private school a principal 
may adopt a system of his own, while a public 
school hangs upon the civil authorities. It would, 
no doubt, be difficult for a public-school teacher 
to introduce new regulations into a school ; but 
no amount of useless routine, no number of profit- 
less material text books, need prevent a spiritual- 



TEACHERS. 59 

minded teacher from imparting spiritual good 
with every teaching he gives forth. Nothing 
should prevent him from being keenly alive and 
intuitive concerning the needs of his pupils, or 
from using every opportunity for individual influ- 
ence among them. Nothing will prevent a truly 
spiritual-minded teacher from seeing wherein re- 
form is needed in the present school system, and 
from making unceasing endeavor to bring about 
such reform. What is it in a democratic country 
that makes school systems ? What is it that 
makes all reforms, if not the demand of a major- 
ity? If every teacher had a realizing sense of 
spiritual reform in the present school system, and 
courage to live up to his convictions, there would 
be no minority in the case. What could be done 
in the city of Boston, for example, by a school 
committee of twenty-four working against the 
quiet insistency of some twelve hundred teachers ? 
Then, school committees are not enemies of spir- 
itual culture ; they simply, as a rule, know nothing 
whatever about it. At worst, they are only igno- 
rant and blundering. If you can show them what 
moral teaching, what spiritual unfoldment will do 
for the young, they will be just as desirous of hav- 



60 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

ing it as you are. If you could once make them 
understand that the immense influence wielded 
by the public school would, when purified of its 
errors and infused with more spirituality, effect a 
thousand times more of the very good for which 
they are working, as well as a higher good, they 
would feel that the school would be defrauded in 
being deprived of this spirituality. 

Competition, that false watchword in schools as 
well as in all the later experiences of life, is totally 
destructive of spirituality. How can we rise high 
morally when we are bent on outdoing our fel- 
lows ; when our aim is not simply to do well our- 
selves, but to do better or appear better than 
some one else ; when we even feel it necessary for 
some one else to be put down in order that we 
may rise ? 

Mothers frequently say: " My child learns 
nothing at home ; he needs the competition of a 
school to urge him forward." It would be just 
as rational to say : " My child is ill ; he needs 
poison infused into his system in order that he 
may have bright eyes and red cheeks." 

The mother is too busy or too indolent, or per- 
haps, with the best intent, is too ignorant to make 



TEACHERS. 6 1 

an appeal to her child's higher nature, and there- 
fore she wishes the work accomplished by an 
appeal to his lower nature, to his selfishness. 

Is it any wonder that the form of egotism 
called competition flourishes in after life and 
bears result in strikes, and boycotting, and finan- 
cial ruin, and a loss of health as a natural recoil 
of selfishness ? Is it any wonder that this plant 
thrives in the man and in the woman when the 
seeds of it are so abundantly sown in the child ? 

We would strike the principle of competition 
out of the school, and then it would not be likely 
to govern the office, and the workshop, and the 
gold market, and the grain market. It would not 
so possess men as to lead them to trample on 
their fellows that they themselves might reach the 
goal the sooner, feeling that the fleetest of foot 
and the heaviest of tread would be sure of the 
prize. It would not hold sway in the drawing- 
room and even in the religious assembly, and 
lead women into household extravagance and 
into follies of fashion that fill life with pecuniary 
anxiety, and outrage rationality, and deprave 
character, and ruin physical health. 

If there is in the heart of the child a germ of 



62 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

this noxious weed, competition, it cannot be de- 
stroyed at too early an age. If the mother has 
failed in this respect, then let the teacher prove 
herself or himself the child's redeemer, and, 
instead of encouraging competition, endeavor to 
instil into his mind that altruistic ambition which 
makes one work more for another's success than 
for his own. 

You may think that such a condition of mind 
is impossible. It is impossible on a purely 
animal plane, and those who are living on that 
plane fail to discern its possibility for any one. 
But there are numberless instances among men 
and perhaps many more among women that 
prove its possibility. 

We have in mind a man whom we know to be 
more desirous of gaining benefits for others than 
of gaining them for himself. So far as worldly 
prosperity is concerned, he does not stand at the 
top of the ladder, and some of his friends pity 
him because he has not done more for himself in 
this respect ; but we think it his crown and his 
glory that he has desired to do more for others 
than for himself. If those who pity him could re- 
gard him spiritually, they would see how misplaced 



TEACHERS. 63 

their pity was. We do not believe that this man, 
as a boy, was ever pleased to march ahead of his 
mates and leave them, envying and unhappy, in 
the rear. 

Children, like their elders, are capable of un- 
selfishness and heroism if properly appealed to. 
But if you appeal only to a child's selfishness, 
how can you learn anything of his capability for 
unselfishness ? 

If prizes are awarded in schools let them not 
be for standing first best, or second best, or third 
best, or any best at all ; but let them be for attain- 
ing a certain proficiency in some branch of learn- 
ing or for a certain standard of excellence in con- 
duct, irrespective of any other one's attainments 
in these regards. If a whole class reach the 
required standard of proficiency in any branch of 
learning, so much the better : let the whole class 
have prizes. If the whole school reach the 
required standard in conduct, so much the better: 
let the whole school have prizes for conduct. 
We would say still further, let honor and admi- 
ration be conferred upon him who is more desir- 
ous of helping his mates to gain prizes than of 
gaining them for himself. 



64 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

A child should never be permitted to feel that 
in order to stand well with his teachers he must 
outdo some one else. On the contrary, let him 
understand that in just so far as he has pushed 
back or hindered, or wished to hinder, some one 
else, he has morally degraded himself. 

If all children were sorry to enjoy advantages 
to the exclusion of others, what material would 
there be among men with which to make mo- 
nopolists in trade or commerce? The boy is 
father to the man. If erroneous tendencies are 
overcome in childhood they will not show them- 
selves in after life. Even if they cannot be wholly 
destroyed, but are only successfully battled with, 
a habit of resistance to these evils will be formed, 
and strength will thus be gained to meet success- 
fully the greater temptations of more mature 
years, and, pursuing this course, there will, in 
every case, arrive a time when the error will be 
wholly vanquished. 

A system of examinations and grade marks 
is greatly to be lamented. How 7 frequently a 
thoughtful student, who has well digested and 
assimilated his subject, but lacking confidence 
or ready speech, will be thrown into the shade 



TEACHERS. 65 

by some flippant pupil who has only skimmed 
the surface of his subject ! 

The ordinary public or semi-public examina- 
tion is no criterion whatever of one's unfoldment 
in any line of thought. 

If a decision regarding a pupil's status is re- 
quired, let him be examined privately by social 
and friendly conversation, in which the most 
shrinking would take courage and the superficial 
and brazen would find that a glib tongue with no 
thought back of it was just so much tinsel thrown 
away. 

As to grade marks, they are an incentive to 
seem rather than to be. Effort is frequently mis- 
directed to gaining high marks instead of doing 
good work. 

If every mother, instead of feeding her child's 
egotism by proclaiming proudly the number of 
his marks, would instil in him the higher view, 
that while the system of marks was a part of 
the school regulations which she was not able 
to abolish, yet he was to remain indifferent to 
marks, and strive only to do the very best work 
of which he was capable, whether any one knew 
of it or not ; if she would pursue this course, her 



66 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

home work would be perfectly harmonious with 
the spiritual work of the very best teacher, and 
she would render that teacher's work easier to 
accomplish. 

You may say that it is not within the province 
of a school to give high spiritual teaching. We 
reply that if teachers were in a high spiritual 
condition, they could no more avoid in some de- 
gree giving such teaching than a fragrant flower 
can avoid giving forth its perfume wherever it 
may be, whether that perfume is demanded or 
expected, or even desired or not. 

If the present school system renders it difficult 
to infuse the highest morality into its teachings, 
or if it even offers a false code of morality, then, 
as a teacher, bend every energy towards working 
a change in that system, in the meantime modi- 
fying it as much as is permissible, in order to har- 
monize it with your own high convictions. 

He must be a very unconscientious or incom- 
petent teacher who gives nothing but text-book 
instruction. 

How many great men and women have said 
that whatever was noble in their characters they 
owed to some teacher of their early years ! Of 



TEACHERS. 67 

course they have worked for it themselves, but 
the teacher has been the guiding light to show 
them the way. 

Any public-school system is an indication of 
the moral and mental condition of that part of 
the public by which it is enforced. If that part 
of the public lack light, let teachers, who are the 
practical workers under them, bring them light. 

Any private-school system is an indication of 
the moral and mental condition of the one in 
authority over that school. If the principal of 
that school lacks wisdom, let the teachers, who 
are his co-workers, give him the benefit of such 
as they may have gained in their pratical appli- 
cation of his theories. 

The principal of a private school can make 
that school just what he desires it to be. He 
can raise it up to the level of his highest convic- 
tions without hindrance outside of himself. He 
naturally attracts, as pupils and as co-workers, 
those who are in sympathy with his designs. If 
he wishes to extend a despotic sway over his 
teachers, he will be quite likely to attract into his 
service such teachers as enjoy being enslaved. 
Lacking courage, he may fear to take a moral 



68 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

stand above the average, lest he thereby dimin- 
ish his patronage. But by giving the very 
best of which he is capable, he would be quite 
likely to find patronage, and he would proba- 
bly be surprised at the number of parents who 
would gladly avail themselves of a school sys- 
tem that promised to be morally above the 
average. 

In all kinds of schools there is so much at- 
tention directed to externals, and so little recog- 
nition of those universally possessed interior 
powers which govern these externals. The fire 
drill in the public schools is an apt illustration of 
this sort of teaching. The pupils are trained to 
march, at the sound of the fire alarm, swiftly and 
methodically out of their class-rooms, so as to 
clear the building in the shortest possible period 
of time. The drill is all well enough, but it is 
the smallest and most external part of a prepara- 
tion for the emergency. 

Why is it that in any sudden emergency one 
does not do the wisest thing of which he is capa- 
ble ? Any one will reply that it is because he 
loses his presence of mind ; fright causes him to 
lose command of his best faculties. This powerful 



TEACHERS, 69 

factor, mind, must, then, be taken into considera- 
tion. 

If children were mere automatons (as we can 
imagine), a habit of proceeding in a certain course 
at a certain signal might ensure for them a cer- 
tain invariable result. But it is a condition of 
mind, and not a habit of body, that governs these 
things. 

If a man at a sudden alarm of fire, believing 
the fire to be in his own house, throws himself 
from a third-story window, instead of going down 
the stairs, as he had opportunity and time to do, 
it is not because he has not a habit of going 
down stairs, and perhaps even of going down 
swiftly at an alarm of fire, when the fire is not 
quite so near him; but it is because his condi- 
tion of mind is such as to overcome both habit 
and reason. So it is with the school children. 
When there is no fire they can march out orderly 
enough ; but when the fire is really upon them, 
their condition of mind suddenly changes, and, 
yielding to a fright which they have not been 
taught to control, they lose command of their fac- 
ulties, and their orderly habit goes for nothing. 

We speak advisedly, as we know of a case in a 



70 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

public school, in which, after seasons of fire drill, 
the pupils, when the real fire was upon them, 
rushed pell-mell from their class-rooms, and dis- 
tractedly made their way out of the building in 
the direst confusion, and with great danger and 
some injury to themselves. 

In the fire drill as a protection, mind is, no 
doubt, taken into consideration so far as this : it 
is expected that the children will become so ac- 
customed to marching out in a swift and orderly 
manner when they hear the fire alarm that they 
will cease to think whether there is a real fire or 
not. Or, perhaps it may be hoped that they will 
always feel confident that there is no real fire, 
and therefore will never be frightened. In either 
case, there is only a slender chance on which to 
build a protection. The children go through 
this drill time and again with a feeling of perfect 
security. The alarm sounds, but they are sure 
there is no fire. This alarm has become only a 
welcome invitation to a pleasant and exhilarating 
exercise. Like the fabled cry of wolf, it has for 
so long been a false utterance that it does not 
move them. But let them one day smell the 
smoke or hear some one say that there is a real 



TEACHERS. 7 1 

fire, and a shock comes upon them that changes 
their condition of mind "in an instant, and as this 
condition of mind is something that has been left 
out of consideration in the fire drill, they do not 
know how to control it. 

It may be asked, What sort of teaching would 
do more for them than is accomplished by the fire 
drill? 

We would reply that while it is well enough to 
train pupils to march in a swift and orderly man- 
ner, yet if half the time devoted to this physical 
exercise were set apart for a metaphysical teach- 
ing bearing especially upon the point at issue, 
the result would, we think, be far more satis- 
factory. 

It may be said that we cannot have meta- 
physics or spiritual science taught in the schools. 
Why not ? 

By the fire drill you are endeavoring to teach 
pupils how to take care of their bodies in case of 
fire. Now, if you learn that there is another 
kind of teaching that will accomplish this object 
better than the fire drill, do you object to it be- 
cause it accomplishes at the same time a much 
higher work in fortifying the pupils for any phys- 



72 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

ical or spiritual emergency that may come to 
them in their present or future career? If the fire 
drill worked all the good intended (which it does 
not do), it would provide but for one emergency ; 
whereas, a knowledge and practice of self-control 
is of universal applicability. 

We have known those with whom a fear of fire 
amounted to a temporary insanity, those w T ho 
blanched and sickened at an alarm of fire, how- 
ever distant, who were cured of this mania by 
spiritual science. If an extreme degree of such 
a fear can be overcome, all ordinary degrees of it 
ought readily to yield to the teaching ; and with- 
out fear, a rational course would be pursued ; 
pupils would be quite likely to obey orders. 

We are aware that the fire drill has been, in 
many cases, abandoned as unsuccessful. But 
why it is unsuccessful, and what sort of teaching 
might advantageously replace it, is not generally 
understood. 

The science which teaches the dominion of the 
higher over the lower nature is a branch of learn- 
ing that should be taught in every school in the 
land. We think that the time will come when 
there will in every school be a class in spiritual 



TEACHERS. 73 

science, just as infallibly as there will be a class 
in geography or grammar. As it is a teaching 
that cannot be given too early in life, it will be 
modified so as to be adapted to the youngest as 
well as the oldest pupil, as history and other 
branches are now modified. 

This branch of learning is needed by pupils in 
schools in order to protect their physical bodies 
from accident and disease (more especially conta- 
gious disease, which works such havoc in schools), 
even if we are not yet so developed as to perceive 
the higher need of it, — the spiritual, the only real 
need. 

If, instead of teaching children to proceed auto- 
matically in case of danger, with the hope of their 
remaining in ignorance of their danger, you would 
endeavor to give them a habit of self-control and 
trustfulness, you would find that you had opened 
them to an inflowing of forces wherewith to meet 
the danger intelligently, as a human being should 
do. The method of bringing through danger by 
hoodwinking may apply to an animal, but there 
is a higher and more effective mode of protection 
for a human being, and a method that will apply 
to youth as well as to age. 



74 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

There are teachers who have a special talent 
for instructing very young children. Let such 
teachers come into a knowledge of metaphysics 
and give forth its moral and spiritual truths in a 
form so simple and attractive that the youngest 
children will anticipate with pleasure the hour 
devoted to such teaching. Call it by any name 
that you think appropriate. You may call it 
ethics ; it is ethics : you may call it religion ; it 
is religion : you may call it individual or political 
economy; it is both. It offers the cheapest and 
most effective method of self and state govern- 
ment. Any one of a thousand names might be 
appropriate to this science, according to its bear- 
ing upon any one of a thousand issues of our 
mortal career. 

Let the hour devoted to this science close with 
a little conference in which the children tell you 
what they have done for themselves since the last 
meeting, what temptations they have resisted, and 
what success they have had in overcoming faults, 
and in holding themselves calm and doing the 
wisest thing in an emergency, and, above all, what 
they have done to give comfort and pleasure to 
others. Let them tell you how indifferent they 



TEACHERS. 75 

have been to physical pain, and how it left them 
because it gained no attention. If you give them 
encouragement you will be surprised to see how 
desirous they will be to gain spiritual heroism. 
The very atmosphere of such a class would effect 
a moral uplifting for all of its members. It would 
tend to give them character rather than book 
learning, to make them true men and women 
rather than pedants. By such teaching a teacher 
would add to the best work of a true mother at 
home, and begin a redeeming work for mother- 
less or neglected children. 

If any institution or abiding-place is, so far as 
moral teaching is concerned, better for a child 
than his home, it is because it is in that respect 
what his home ought to be, but is not. If any 
person's moral supervision is better for a child 
than his mother's, it is because that other is in 
this respect what his mother ought to be, but 
is not. 

We will hear it said that the discipline of a 
large school is better for a child than home dis- 
cipline. This is no doubt true where the home is 
not what it ought to be. 

Individual influence, however, cannot tell for 



j6 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

so much among a large number as among a few. 
For that reason, any substitute for a home, as an 
asylum, a hospital, a house of correction, or re- 
form, ought, in order to work any great moral 
good, to resemble a home as much as possible. 
Let the erring be put together in small numbers 
with a mother element in supervision over each 
little group. Let the insane be only one among 
those who are most sane. We think that of all 
boarding schools for youth, the one in which the 
strongest and most lasting influence for good is 
exerted is what is called the little home school. 
The word home seems a misnomer for any insti- 
tution numbering one hundred members. 

The majority of these large institutions, how- 
ever, are a great blessing. They are perhaps the 
best that can be done under present conditions 
and in the present state of society. But we think 
that the time will come when our blessings will 
find a higher and more effective mode of expres- 
sion. It is doubtless just now impossible to or- 
ganize a sufficient number of small institutions 
for reformation of character or for healing, to say 
nothing of those for the education of the young, 
as it would necessitate a much greater number of 



TEACHERS. J>] 

capable workers in the field. But we think as 
mankind becomes more advanced and spiritually 
unfolded, a greater number will take up such 
work, and then we shall learn that harmony is 
more easily established among a few than among 
many. Such would not be the case were those to 
be brought under influence individually harmoni- 
ous. Were we each already perfectly harmonious, 
we might number myriads, and, like the stars in 
the heavens, move along in perfect harmony. But 
the very words educate, reform, and heal indicate 
that latent powers are to be judiciously un- 
folded, that faults are to be corrected, that vices 
and errors are to be overcome; in sum, they indi- 
cate the existence of individual inharmonies, which 
must affect the collective inharmony of any num- 
ber brought together under one supervision. 
Those who have within themselves the elements 
of discord must discord with others, and the 
greater the number of such brought together, the 
more difficult will be the work of establishing and 
maintaining harmony. They act and react upon 
one another, morally and mentally. We think 
that as we progress spiritually, our educational 
and benevolent institutions, instead of growing to 



78 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

those mammoth proportions which seem to be 
the delight of a material age, will constantly de- 
crease in size and increase in number. 

Although individual influence is incalculable, 
yet we do not believe that it extends in equal 
measure to all the world. The reformation of all 
mankind does not depend upon any one of us, but 
upon all of us who have come into light, each to 
do our own appointed and circumscribed work. 
If we, any of us, take upon ourselves more work 
than we are fitted to do, our work is simply not 
well done. How much individual influence may 
we suppose is exerted by the dean or president of a 
college ? If this dean or president is a good man, 
his influence for good over the mass is, we admit, 
immense, but there will be numberless young men 
who will leave the college feeling that they have 
scarcely entered into his sphere at all. His influ- 
ence is that of the public administrator, but it 
cannot go out with a special directness and appli- 
cation to each individual in a way to strengthen 
the weak and reform the erring. 

But as colleges — although they are supposed 
to uphold ethics and religion — are not for the 
special work of moral, mental, or physical reform, 



TEACHERS. 79 

they can, perhaps better than other institutions, 
afford to be large. 

Still, is it not impossible for the teacher of a 
large class to adapt even his intellectual teach- 
ings to each member of that class? A general 
teaching is given forth, which all, however vary- 
ing in development, are supposed to appropriate 
with benefit to themselves. God does not deal 
with us in this way in our earthly education. In 
accordance with his wise laws, our own individual 
spiritual and mental condition compile for us the 
lessons we are to learn ; they build up our circum- 
stances and bring us the peculiar teaching we 
individually require, and no two of us are placed 
under precisely the same circumstances, no two 
of us require precisely the same teaching. God 
in his most important teaching deals with us in- 
dividually, and the nearer we can approximate to 
his wise plan, the more powerful will be our influ- 
ence for individual good. 

The greatest work that a college professor will 
accomplish in his large class, will be perhaps the 
influence he will exert over some one pupil 
whom he has drawn near to him. This professor, 
having him much in mind, and learning his men- 



80 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

tal bias, will not only raise him morally, but will, 
even unconsciously, turn a little out of the beaten 
path to adapt his intellectual teaching to that one 
pupil, who will thereby receive more benefit than 
the rest of the class. Or, sometimes by intimate 
acquaintance, a professor will learn that a pupil 
might, with more advantage to himself, pursue 
some study other than the one he is teaching 
him, and he will advise him to make a change of 
class-rooms. 

There is a great deal too much automatic 
teaching and automatic learning pursued in the 
present school systems. There is too frequently 
an effort made to unfold the youthful mind in a 
certain line for which it is not yet ready for 
unfoldment, to the exclusion of just that unfold- 
ment for which it is ready, and of which it stands 
in need. 

But as an intellectual mistake is of far less 
importance than a spiritual mistake, so imperfect 
colleges are less important than imperfect hos- 
pitals or prisons. Where vice, error, or evil 
inclinations are to be overcome, something more 
than a widely diffused attention is required. 

There are those who have a special gift for 



TEACHERS. 8 1 

ministering to the masses ; their work is essen- 
tially a public work, and it is perhaps a great 
work ; but for the healing of the spirit, mind, or 
body of an individual, something more than pub- 
lic ministration is required. 

When a man is diseased, he feels that he must 
have the individual supervision of the doctor. 
Spiritual science would advise a similar course in 
cases of moral or mental ailment; the peculiar 
case should be studied and the spiritual remedy 
administered accordingly. 

When one man has charge of a reformatory 
school of two hundred children, what does he know 
of their individual spiritual needs ? Not know- 
ing them, he is quite likely to fail to attack the root 
of their ailment and send them forth reformed. 

When one woman has charge of two hundred 
orphans, how can she, even though the wisest and 
most loving of women, in any way answer their 
individual cries for a mother's love ? We have 
known children in such institutions, who were 
abundantly supplied with good food, clothing, 
shelter, and amusement, who, nevertheless, pined 
and sickened for the mother caress which their 
clinging natures craved. It was not that the 






82 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

matron in charge did not love them collectively 
as little human beings for whose comfort and 
happiness she was responsible, but they needed 
to draw near individually to some warm heart, 
which for the moment, at least, might seem to 
belong to them. 

We, who are older, may know that our presi- 
dent, our governor, our doctor, and our minister 
love us collectively, but we nevertheless need the 
solace of individual friendship; we need a hand 
not waved to us among thousands, but one that 
clasps our very own. The love that the children 
of such institutions bestow upon one another 
often proves their salvation. How many caresses 
could the busy matron of two hundred little 
beings dispense daily, and how intimately ac- 
quainted could she become with their several 
spiritual needs, so as to minister to them accord- 
ingly ? 

Where one physician has charge of the healing 
of five hundred insane patients, what can he pos- 
sibly know of the individual causes of their men- 
tal derangement ? Not knowing these, can he 
be so successful in making them sane ? 

Of course, a giving forth of lofty general truth 



TEACHERS. 83 

is always uplifting, and may bring order into 
the chaos of an unsound mind. We know that 
the unsound in mind and body have been healed 
by only the atmosphere of a metaphysical assem- 
bly, and that the ailing and erring must always to 
some extent receive good from such an assembly, 
with even no thought of the cause of their 
unsoundness ; still, we think that all cases are not 
satisfactorily reached in this general way. It has 
been said that Jesus, in healing, never inquired 
into the cause of an ailment. But we believe 
that, by means of his perfectly developed intuition, 
he always knew the cause, and sometimes he 
ppenly rebuked that cause, as when he reminded 
the woman of Samaria of the sin at the back of 
her infirmity. 

The causes of mental and physical infirmity 
are to-day, as in the time of Jesus, sometimes wil- 
ful vice and sometimes mere ignorance or weak- 
ness, and an individual drawing near and going 
forth of the spirit of the healer is just as essential 
now as it was then. Jesus never assembled his 
sick and infirm together and gave them a general 
treatment. On the contrary, when they came to 
him in throngs, and were doubtless benefited to 



84 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

some extent as a multitude, each patient was 
individually addressed, and felt the touch of that 
healing hand or met the glance of those wondrous, 
loving eyes, as a token that the spirit of the 
Healer was for that moment employed in his 
individual service. This perfect Teacher and 
Healer, who knew all the sins and weaknesses 
that had brought his patients low, has emphati- 
cally taught us to draw near to our patient 
individually. 

All of our public institutions are established 
on so material a basis. The inmates of lunatic 
asylums, for example, receive so much well-in- 
tended thought concerning their bodies, and so 
little concerning their spirits, whence spring the 
discords that have unhinged their minds. The 
physician who takes charge of only bodies has 
no remedy for a mind diseased. How can one 
who knows nothing of the laws of mental har- 
mony help others to resolve their discords into 
harmony? How can any one teach what he 
himself does not know ? 

We may not just yet be able to reduce the 
size and increase the number of reform institu- 
tions, but we can at once make an effort to re- 



TEACHERS. 85 

form the systems on which they are at present 
based. There is, in our community, no more 
crying need than that of prison reform. The 
increase of crime in our midst proves the futility, 
if not the harmfulness, of our present vindictive 
method of treatment for criminals. 

We believe that the time will come when cap- 
ital punishment will be regarded with the horror 
that it merits ; when State reasons for the taking 
of life, though now so specious, will be perceived 
to be pure sophistry, and no more founded* on 
justice or divine law than individual reasons for 
the same atrocity. 

Vice, from which springs crime, is a disease 
that must be understood before it can be cured. 
If we have a son or a brother who is erring, we 
do not, if we obey the dictates of an upright soul, 
treat him with contempt, or offer him food poorer 
than our own. We approach him with special 
kindliness. We endeavor to redeem him by love, 
the only healing power. Why should a crimi- 
nal be ill fed or be left in idleness, which is 
the mother of despair? Are w r e revenging our- 
selves upon him for the wrong he may have 
committed, or are we trying to redeem him 



86 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

from error, while we are protecting the public 
from his influence? 

Prisons should never be a bill of expense to 
the State. They are filled with able-bodied men 
and women, in whose salvation good work would 
prove a most effective ally. Not only give them 
work, but give them a choice of work. Let them 
do the work they love to do and can do well; 
for there is always some rational, beneficial work 
that even the worst criminal can do. If he is a 
burglar, turn the talent which he has perverted 
into a legitimate channel, and thus help to bring 
about in him that harmonious condition of mind 
which leads to redemption. Let prisoners earn 
not only their own living, but also that of their 
families, which they otherwise leave destitute. 
If they have no families to support, let their sur- 
plus earnings go to help the needy of their own 
kin, or of their own town or city, for the State 
treasury needs nothing more from them than a 
reimbursement of their cost. 

A man could earn just as good a living for his 
family in prison as out of prison, if suitable work 
were provided for him ; and a man addicted to 
vices impossible in prison would in many cases 



TEACHERS. 87 

provide better for his family than ever he had 
done before. 

Let the same regulations hold for women as 
for men ; and as the earnings of women are less 
frequently needed in their families, they could 
do more than men towards relieving general 
destitution. Would it tend to harden or soften 
the hearts of men or women, criminals though 
they might be, to be told of the number of 
the starving who had been fed, and of the 
homeless and perishing who had been clothed, 
and sheltered, and warmed by their surplus 
wages ? 

It may be urged that if prison life were made 
agreeable crime would increase. We do not be- 
lieve it; and we think that the discharged would 
be far less likely to return, under such a system, 
than under the present one. 

Let prison life be made just as comfortable 
and enjoyable as is consistent with the object in 
view, viz., the uplifting of the fallen. Let pris- 
oners have hours for work, and hours for mental 
and physical culture, and hours for recreation. 
Let them have access to a good library ; in sum, 
let them be so treated that their whole prison life 



88 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

will be a harmonious system of reformatory 
teaching. 

All public institutions for benefiting and uplift- 
ing humanity should be schools, and those in 
charge of them should be teachers. 

A prison should be only a school to teach the 
inmates how to conquer their vices or weak- 
nesses ; a hospital, to teach how to overcome 
sickness and disease of body ; a house of reform, 
to teach how to correct faults, and gain strength 
of character; and an asylum to teach the blind 
or the deaf how best to adapt themselves spirit- 
ually and materially to their conditions, even 
though the lacking sense may not be restored 
to them. 

We do not include the lunatic asvlum in this 
list, as we think that not even two insane persons 
should be brought together. Their great inhar- 
mony would expose them to mutual maltreat- 
ments that could not be resisted. 

We think that in the golden age to come 
society will be in a condition to offer so many 
workers in the spiritual field, that wherever there 
is an atmosphere of spiritual soundness and 
health, there will be found also some weak or 






TEACHERS. 89 

erring one to reap the benefit of that atmosphere ; 
just as where a country is well tilled, every inch 
of soil is utilized. Then all who are capable of 
doing good work will exert themselves to do good. 

We shall see scattered throughout the land, in 
favored spots and choice locations, any number 
of little home schools of perhaps ten or twelve 
inmates, which may be severally composed of 
outcasts, or criminals, or blind, or deaf, or aged, 
or orphans, or waifs, or diseased, and each school 
under the supervision of some wise and loving 
teacher, whose spiritual and intellectual unfold- 
ment renders him or her perfectly adapted for 
the special teaching required. We shall find 
here and there an insane person a welcome guest 
in some serene household, in which all the mem- 
bers are most sane and sound, and possessed of 
just the sort of courage and ability that makes 
them love to offer such hospitality to their weaker 
and more erring fellow-beings. 

We shall see no one who has ability to do for 
others allowing that ability to rust from disuse. 

We shall see no one who is not willing to share 
both his spiritual and material blessings with 
those poorer than himself. 



90 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

There will be no drones ; but each will dis- 
cover his mission and discharge its duties faith- 
fully. The world will be full of teachers. Every 
one will be a teacher for some other one. 

We shall see all this, until that teaching classed 
under the head of reform or cure will have been 
so perfectly done that prevention will have taken 
the place of cure and no further reform will be 
needed. There will be a work of forming, but 
not of reforming. There will be simply a work 
of natural, harmonious unfolding to be done. 

Such a state of society would most certainly be 
heaven upon earth ; but heaven should be begun 
on earth. 

We need an ideal to work towards. We may 
not just yet reach the mountain top bearing our 
banner with the strange device, but we can each 
of us raise the cry " Excelsior, " and start upon 
the road. 

We can each of us hold fast to our ideal of 
perfection, and conscientiously work for its attain- 
ment. 



CHAPTER III. 



EMPLOYERS. 



In a broad sense, all responsible adults stand 
in the relation of employers to a great number of 
their fellow-beings. 

In a more limited but usually adopted sense, 
however, an employer is one who engages another 
to render some special service for a mutually 
agreed upon equivalent, ordinarily in money. 

Instead of feeling, with that noble but peculiarly 
developed reformer, Count Tolstoi, that we ought 
each to supply our own needs, and employ no 
one in our service, let us feel that the relation of 
employer should be a reciprocal one ; that while 
we employ others in our service, we should stand 
equally ready to render our services to others, 
each of us doing the work for which, from our 
peculiar unfoldment, we are best fitted. If, for 
example, a man makes my hats or coats, I may 
be able to write his books or paint his pictures. 
An interchange of service is the only rational 



91 



92 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

labor basis for a harmonious community. The 
animal may be fitted to supply all its individual 
needs, and what one of a species can do all can 
do ; but man, in his higher and varying degrees 
and lines of unfoldment, has discovered a wonder- 
ful economy in assigning to each his own peculiar 
work. 

A large proportion of the young, especially 
among men, on leaving colleges or schools, as- 
sume at once the attitude of the employed ; and 
below them in the social status is a large but less 
prosperous class, who, almost from infancy, rank 
among the employed. From this we see how 
large a proportion of the inhabitants of a civilized 
country are under the direct influence, and, so far 
as a certain part of their time is concerned, the 
full control of another. It is within the province 
and power, and even within the line of duty, of 
that other to exert over these employed a decided 
influence for good. 

If one has not been fortunate enough in the 
past to be helped by parent or teacher in the 
work of self-redemption, it is never too late for an 
employer to begin that work. If such work has 
fortunately been already begun, it should be con- 



EMPLOYERS. 93 

tinued; for we all of us, at all times, need the 
inflowing of good upon us to redeem us from 
ignorance and save us from error. 

It is needless to say to any one with a fine 
sense of justice, that an industrial system based 
upon co-operation instead of competition is the 
ideal towards which we are to work. Noble ex- 
emplifiers of even the financial success of this so 
considered practically impossible system are fast 
proving to the world that nothing in the way of 
good is impossible to those who really desire it. 

If we once realized that the plan of our dealing 
with those in our employ was not based upon 
justice, we would not have the face to talk of 
exerting a good influence until we had changed 
that base. 

A system by which an employer — whether a 
government, a company, or an individual — first 
renders full justice to the employed, and then 
endeavors to raise them up by an unceasing 
appeal to their higher natures, is a system that 
permits of the very best influence of which 
humanity is capable. But how is such a system 
to become generally adopted ? 

Like all improved systems, it can be brought 



94 THE FIVE REDEEMERS, 

about only by individuals who have risen up to 
its level. 

In that earnest and richly suggestive book 
" Looking Backward " is pictured what to the 
majority to-day is an unpractical system of social 
industry. The picture presented is doubtless the 
nearest approach to perfection of which the author 
was able to conceive. It is for us to look into it, 
and wherein we see good, to make that ideal of 
good practical by working up towards it, knowing 
that we shall never have such a system until we 
make it. 

To suppose that systems make society is to 
mistake effect for cause. It is society that makes 
systems, and as it is individuals that compose so- 
ciety, any social reform presupposes a majority of 
individuals who have mentally and morally risen 
up to the level of such reform. 

When a majority of the Italian people, for ex- 
ample, desired the consolidation of their states, 
and were in a condition to be freed from a certain 
tyranny of the Pope, a Victor Emanuel was at 
hand to lead the reform for them. But if an ade- 
quate number of them had not been ready for 
that reform, a hundred Victor Emanuels could 



EMPLOYERS. 95 

not have effected the work, or if by a miracle he 
had done so, it would not have stood. 

To imagine a social system based on altruism 
introduced into a community of which the major- 
ity are basely selfish, and drawing them up to its 
standard, is to look with blurred vision upon a 
fine team moving beautifully along on a smooth 
road, and think it is the cart that draws the 
horse. 

What power is there in a selfish community to 
make an unselfish system ? Or if, by any inver- 
sion of divine order, such a system could be forced 
upon such a community, how could it stand for a 
single day? Then, still further to suppose the 
impossible, if such a system were forced upon 
such a community, and, by rewards for virtue, 
and a removal of all incentives to vice, they were 
held to the pursuance of virtue, how much better 
for it would be their interior condition ? 

We do not for a moment mean to intimate that 
we should not unceasingly do all we can to im- 
prove our exterior as well as our interior condi- 
tion,— and the former would be sure to come as 
an effect of the latter, — but how can such external 
work be done where there is not an adequate 



g6 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

number of individuals who from their interior 
condition desire to have it done? 

We all know that, while it is our duty to remove 
every external temptation from the path of the 
young, yet that, by doing this alone, we accom- 
plish only a small part of our work, which should 
be so to raise them up spiritually that the only 
real temptation, which is always within them, 
would be overcome. 

Concerning the temperance question, for exam- 
ple : while we believe in taking the very highest 
ground regarding these externals, yet we would 
never for a moment imagine that by merely re- 
moving temptation we were working the real 
reform, which must be accomplished in the spirit- 
ual, not in the material realm. 

As is evident to-day, the best external condi- 
tions cannot be forced upon us. They cannot 
be brought about until there is an adequate 
power in the community to produce them. 

We know that even now there are in our midst 
many men and more women, who on the liquor 
question take the very highest ground, which is 
always that of absolute right. They go further 
back than a prohibition of the sale of intoxicating 



EMPLOYERS. 97 

drink, to a prohibition of its very production. 
The simple knowledge that it is wrong to pro- 
duce anything which from its nature and use is 
an injury to our fellow-beings is all the argument 
they need on the subject, for absolute right is 
always so very simple. But, unfortunately, there 
are not enough such men to work the good they 
desire. There is a larger but equally sincere 
class, who are doing good work up to their stand- 
ard of right, but can see no further than relative 
right. They are always calculating the conse- 
quences. They are always taking God's work 
out of his hands in their planning for results. So 
the community must wait until the majority grow 
up to the standard of absolute right before even 
these externals can be properly adjusted. 

In the meantime, however, it is for the minor- 
ity, who are spiritually enlightened, to work the 
real reform by helping the weak, diseased inebri- 
ate to overcome the love of drink ; for vice has 
its root, not in social systems, but in the heart of 
the offender. 

We cannot afford to sit down and wait in idle- 
ness for more perfect social systems to be inaugu- 
rated, for it may be that we are the very iridivid- 



98 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

uals who, by working for the spiritual elevation 
of ourselves and others, are generating the motive 
power to effect such reforms. If we desire them, 
it will surely be we and such as we who are des- 
tined to bring them about. 

It is often asked what an honest, unselfish man 
can do in his struggle for life, in the midst of so- 
cial systems based on greed and selfishness. We 
reply that he can always work to preserve his 
own individual integrity, and God will take care 
of the result. In doing this, he does also a thou- 
sand times more than this, for he thereby wields 
an influence for good whose results are beyond 
human calculation. 

It may be argued that such a course is all very 
well for a man, who has only himself to look 
out for, but for me, for example, with my family 
to support, it would not work. We will ask if 
you have ever given it a thorough trial. Cannot 
our Heavenly Parent, who has charge of all the 
vast universe, and who, even to our finite com- 
prehension, has proved his infinite ability to 
superintend its whole economy, — can he not be 
trusted to help you to ways and means to provide 
food, and clothing, and shelter for your little 



EMPLOYERS. 99 

family, when you render yourself passive to all 
good by your harmony with divine law ? Try 
the pursuance of absolute right and see what it 
will bring you. Do not dally with right and 
waste your energies in arguing that if you do 
thus and so, such and such results will be likely 
to ensue, for we know nothing about results 
except the one truth, that if we pursue good 
nothing but good can possibly result from it, 
whether that good lies just within the limits of 
our little aim or not. 

It is the pursuance of absolute right irrespec- 
tive of results that makes the great man, the 
godlike man, and such a course has been proved 
possible even in the midst of the most cor- 
rupt systems. 

All spiritual and moral uplifting must be begun 
in individuals, extending by individual effort to 
whole classes, thence to whole nations. 

The whole of any one man's duty lies within 
the limits of his own individual capability, and it 
is for the doing of only his own duty that he is 
responsible, and not for that of the class or nation 
to which he belongs. 

We do not mean by this that we are not to 



IOO THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

unite our efforts with others, for all who are simi- 
larly unfolded in any one line of thought should 
endeavor to come together for the common 
good of humanity. There is an immense power 
in co-operation. It is said that energy is propor- 
tioned to the square, instead of the sum, of the 
numbers producing it; that the sum of energy 
produced by six united persons is thirty-six times 
as great as that evolved by a single person. 

A man's conception of his duty is always in 
accordance with his degree of intellectual and 
spiritual unfoldment. This fact is nowhere more 
plainly manifest than in the different attitudes 
assumed towards the liquor question. The men, 
the voting and therefore influential members of 
our community, who direct these external affairs, 
stand on all grades of moral ground, from the 
high mountain top of absolute right, down 
through the lower grades of relative right, to the 
low, shadowy valley of gross self-indulgence, 
regardless of all right. 

The result of these varying degrees of unfold- 
ment, as manifest in the liquor laws of to-day, 
proves which grade of men are in the majority. 
Not those of the mountain top, who would forbid 



EMPLOYERS. IOI 

the production of what, from its nature and use, 
injures mankind; not yet those of the next level 
below, who would forbid its distribution, but those 
of a still lower grade, who would only lessen its 
distribution. Well, this little good is better than 
none at all, and it will be sure to grow into a 
greater good just as rapidly as the individual 
voting members of our community become more 
enlightened. 

We, as only one individual member of the 
community, may not be able to adjust the liquor 
laws any more than any other laws, in accordance 
with our sense of right, but we can, nevertheless, 
perform our individual duty by banishing all 
intoxicating drink from our business houses and 
our homes, and from our own lives, wherever and 
however we may be situated, and, above all, by 
working to overcome all desire for it in ourselves 
and in those with whom we are associated. 

How can a man have the face to discharge any 
one in his employ for drinking what he calls too 
much, when he himself indulges in the same evil, 
though it may be to a less extent ? As it is 
the nature of evil to grow when nourished, how 
does this employer know at what precise moment 



102 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

he will arrive at a point at which he will take too 
much? Any evil at all is too much evil for any 
of us to indulge in. 

Before a man can exert any great influence for 
good over those in his employ, he must himself 
become upright. How can an employer have 
the face to discharge one of his men for stealing 
money from his safe, when he himself, by what 
he chooses to consider a legitimate process, is 
daily defrauding his fellow-men ? 

Then, there are many employers, who, though 
temperate, honest, and upright themselves, yet 
through ignorance or indolence, signally fail in 
their duty to their employed. They perhaps 
sincerely desire to do their best by those whose 
lives they take part in shaping, but they fail to 
see that best, or they find it so much trouble, or 
they see so much discomfort or inconvenience to 
themselves or some one else that might arise from 
it, that they feel justified in omitting to do it. 

A merchant perhaps learns that one of his 
clerks is leading a bad life ; that he so wastes his 
energies in dissipation that his services are daily 
becoming of less value. The employer obeys the 
dictates of his conscience so far as to warn the 



EMPLOYERS. IO3 

young man by pointing out the evil of his ways, 
and threatening to discharge him if he does not 
do better. The young man does not do better, 
and he is at length discharged. As he has not 
committed any flagrant act of dishonesty, the 
employer gives him a passable recommendation 
and turns him off on to some one else, with a 
virtuous feeling that he has done his best by him. 
Now, suppose that, instead of warning him and 
showing him the evil of his ways, he had encour- 
aged him and shown him the good he was capable 
of and that he expected of him. Suppose that, 
in addition, he had taken the trouble to see that 
he was provided with rational diversion, by per- 
haps introducing him to some suitable companion 
who had the time he himself lacked to devote to 
the case, or in some other way seeing to it that 
he had wholesome occupation for his mind dur- 
ing his leisure hours ; even though all this might 
occupy several whole evenings, and take the pros- 
perous merchant away from his own comfortable 
fireside for hours at a time, would he not, by so 
doing, generate a warmth within his own heart 
that would amply compensate him for his trouble ? 
Suppose, still further, that this employer con- 



104 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

quered within himself all doubts and fears regard- 
ing the young man's reform, and persisted in hold- 
ing a mental picture of him as upright and whole ; 
would he not be sure to see some good result ? 

Would not even a man who had no knowledge 
of spiritual things, and was ignorant of the won- 
der-working power of thought, be able to see that 
such a course would be likely to make a telling 
appeal to the weak and erring ? 

One who was spiritually enlightened would 
know that such a case was brought to him that 
he might be an instrument of good, and that the 
suggested course would be simply a performance 
of duty, and anything short of it a culpable neg- 
lect of duty. He would regard such a case as a 
glorious opportunity for the working of good. 

How much opportunity there is also for women 
to prove themselves the saviours of other women 
in their employ, either as household servants, or 
as co-workers in some industrial art, or as clerks, 
accountants, etc. ! A feeling of universal sister- 
hood is, in these cases, the only basis for mutual 
benefit. So long as a woman feels herself better 
than another woman, however more advanced 
morally, or intellectually, or socially she may be, 



EMPLOYERS. IO5 

just so long her influence for good over that 
woman will be limited, or perhaps destroyed. 
She may lavish upon her material benefits, intel- 
lectual teaching, moral counsel, and even spiritual 
knowledge, but she will never find her way to 
the inner nature of that woman so as to uplift 
her and save her from error. 

Why should we ever consider ourselves better 
than another person ? Is it because we think 
that in that person's place we would do better 
than they ? 

There is but one way, and that an impossible 
one, to prove that we would in any case do bet- 
ter than another, and that is for us to take upon 
ourselves the circumstances and the character of 
that other. 

Pride of purse, pride of intellect, pride of so- 
cial position, pride of race, and pride of family 
are just so many enormous stumbling-blocks in 
the way of good to our fellows. 

But -there are women who have none of these 
weaknesses, yet who, through ignorance or indif- 
ference, signally fail in their duty to their em- 
ployed. 

How frequently what is considered a very 



106 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

good kind of woman will turn her back upon an 
open sinner, instead of lending her a helping 
hand ! Such a woman never seems to think that 
one indulging in evident sin may be far less 
guilty than she herself, with her secret sin. We 
are neither judge nor jury in the divine tribunal. 
Our part of the work is to lend our aid towards 
reformation, and we never did and never can 
reform any one by contempt or neglect. 

A conscientious employer of other women 
scarcely needs, in this enlightened age, to be re- 
minded of her duty concerning the physical wel- 
fare of her employed, but she does need to be re- 
minded that her responsibility does not end there. 

As men need to learn the lesson of universal 
brotherhood, so women need, and perhaps still 
more, to learn and practise universal sisterhood. 

Every woman should regard every other wo- 
man as a sister, as one of the same divine origin, 
and launched out upon the same career, that of 
perfect development. 

The advantages of co-operation in any joint 
work, as a basis for this feeling of universal sis- 
terhood, cannot be over-estimated. By a super- 
ficial view, it may seem that a more equal divis- 



EMPLOYERS. IO7 

ion of anything so paltry as money is a small 
thing on which to base love or friendship ; but 
it is justice, not money, that forms this base. 

We have heard women say that they had 
lost all love and respect for their husbands on 
account of their meanness in money affairs. 
Meanness is always injustice. If a man is meanly 
close with his money, that meanness is a part of 
his character, a part of himself, that is, a part 
of his mortal, erroneous self. No just man could 
possibly be mean with his money in his dealings 
with any one, much less with one whom he pre- 
tended to love. 

If poor girls saw that their employers desired 
to mete out full justice to them, they would feel 
the influence of that love which is always back 
of true justice, and it would prove the greatest 
possible incentive to noble effort on their part. 
For her own interest, as a matter of economy, 
an employer could do nothing better than to 
bestow friendly and active unselfishness on those 
in her employ. By such a course, she and they 
would be one in purpose and in interest. 

That humane woman, Miss Clementina Black, 
of London, has organized what she calls a con- 



108 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

sinners' league, a body of people who refuse to 
thrive on the wrongs of others, and who are able 
to give information to the public as to what 
employers are fair and what unfair to their em' 
ployed. 

If any one in your service should be weak or 
erring, do not turn her off upon some one else, 
who may be harder with her than you are ; but 
give her counsel and courage, and an opportu- 
nity to retrieve her character; above all, school 
yourself to believe in the highest part of her and 
to hold her in mind as reformed. 

This believing in the good, that is invariably 
somewhere within even the so-called very worst 
people, is the most difficult part of our work in 
the reformation of others. 

We need first to reform ourselves, in order to 
catch a glint of the divine, electric spark, to be 
found in even the darkest soul, and which may, 
at any time, under the right conditions, flash 
forth into a flame of divine fire. We need the 
vision of one who is pure in heart, for it is only 
the pure in heart who can see God, or discover 
good in everything. 

If women saw more good and less evil in 



EMPLOYERS. IO9 

those whom they employ, that good would speed- 
ily manifest itself, and the evil would disappear. 

Of course, a woman who indulges in a certain 
evil herself cannot expect to exorcise that evil in 
another. An ill-tempered and disorderly woman 
cannot reasonably expect the servants of her 
household to be orderly or amiable. 

A woman who sets intoxicating drink upon 
her table, and partakes of it herself, can hardly 
reprimand a servant for intoxication. Yet we 
have known such a woman feel herself unjustly 
treated when a poor, weak servant, perhaps pre- 
disposed to intemperance, yielded to the tempta- 
tion she daily set before him or her. Then, 
instead of saying that the sin is hers, and she 
will remove the temptation and help him reform, 
she continues in her own error, and turns him 
off upon some one else. 

What kind of a woman is it who can tran- 
quilly, and even cheerfully, sit at her own table, 
while the one serving her is perhaps struggling 
against a terrible temptation, to which she has 
invited him to yield by the generously replen- 
ished wine glasses under his charge? Is she 
necessarily a bad woman ? Not at all. She is, 



IIO THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

perhaps, full of virtues and graces of charac- 
ter. She is simply undeveloped, and therefore 
thoughtless. She has not yet wakened up to the 
truth of the situation. But the time will surely 
come when she will awaken, — and may it not 
need to be by some rude and agonizing shock, — 
and then she will wonder that she never saw the 
truth clearly before. 

We know of a noble woman, who, when a ser- 
vant otherwise satisfactory proved herself dis- 
honest, instead of turning her away, worked for 
her reform. Plainly but kindly she told her of 
her fault. 

" I know just what articles you have taken," she 
said. " I am sorry that you have this weakness, 
and I am going to help you conquer it. There 
is no reason why you should not become the 
most honest girl in the world. You do not want 
to be dishonest, and you are not going to be so." 

The girl manifested in turn the various phases 
of feeling natural to such an occasion. First she 
was indignant, then angry, then sullenly obsti- 
nate. But her mistress firmly but kindly held to 
the one point, — that she was going to help her 
reform. Shortly the spirit of truth so worked 



EMPLOYERS. Ill 

upon the girl that she confessed her fault with 
bitter tears of repentance, followed by an appeal 
for help to overcome the weakness. 

Her cry for help was responded to both in 
the visible and invisible realms, and she became 
honest. 

You may say that in a majority of such cases 
there would be no such ready response to your 
efforts. We reply that it is not our concern 
whether there is response or not. We are simply 
to do the good work, and to continue to do it irre- 
spective of results. At the same time, we firmly 
believe that in the majority of such cases, if the 
work of reform were persistently continued in a 
spirit of love and charity, manifest results would 
not be lacking. 

Let all who serve in your household feel that 
their efforts are not to be directed solely to mak- 
ing your home comfortable and pleasing, but 
impress upon them the fact that your home is 
also their home, and that, by a conscientious ful- 
filment of duty, they will insure such harmony 
to the atmosphere of this home as will contribute 
to their health and happiness equally with your 
own. 



112 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

Let a woman as well as a man take an interest 
in those whom she employs, outside of their 
working hours, so that they may feel that she 
enters into their lives. 

There are now on record numbers of industrial 
establishments, both in America and Europe, 
connected with which are libraries, reading-rooms, 
gymnasiums, restaurants, etc., in which those who 
serve feel that their employer enters into their 
lives, outside of business interests. They feel 
that they are more to him than the machinery or 
the tools, from which he turns indifferently away 
at night, with no further thought of them until 
the following day, when he expects to find them 
again ready for use. He is also more to them 
than a bank, from which they draw their weekly 
salary. 

Such a mutual attitude is the only humane, the 
only rational one to assume; and when both 
parties are co-workers in any honorable business, 
it must be productive of great mutual good. 

Of course, there could not be much mutual 
respect maintained where the business under- 
taken was a dishonorable one. No man has a 
moral right to engage in any dishonorable busi- 



EMPLOYERS. I I 3 

ness, in any labor or traffic that works an injury 
to his fellow-beings, much less, to give such 
employment to others. 

There is a certain class of men who consider 
any business legitimate that will give them what 
they call an honest living, that is, one in which 
they do not literally put their hands into other 
men's pockets, or their knives to other men's 
throats. Many such men are well-meaning, but 
simply undeveloped and ignorant. 

When some of the members of the Woman's 
Christian Temperance Union visited certain 
liquor saloons in the western part of our country, 
they were surprised to find that the saloon keep- 
ers were not the bad men they expected them to 
be. They found them in many instances pos- 
sessed of a heart and a conscience, even if an 
unenlightened one. They disliked the business 
they were engaged in, but they alleged that it 
was their business, and they understood it better 
than any other, and they must make a living ; or, 
it had been left them by their father, and they 
could not get rid of it; or, they intended to 
pursue it only for a few years, just long enough 
to secure their families from want, and then they 



114 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

would gladly wash their hands of it forever, etc. 
One of these men even confessed that to hand a 
glass of liquor to a man who was ruining himself 
and his family, was more than he had the heart 
to do, so he generally stepped aside, and let some 
one in his employ do it for him. 

The noble women referred to — for the strong- 
est work in the temperance cause is accomplished 
by the so-called weaker sex — so wrought upon 
these men as, in some cases, to induce them 
to discharge their clerks, close their saloons, and 
actually trust in God, or luck, as they some- 
times expressed it, to help them to a better means 
of support. 

If a man believes that there is more harm than 
good in the liquor business, why should he be 
willing to engage in it, and, still worse, give other 
men the same dishonorable employment ? 

If a man believes that wine and tobacco do 
more harm than good, why should he engage in 
the importation and sale of wines and tobacco, 
and thus relate himself psychically with these 
evils, and work harm to himself and all whom he 
employs in the same dishonorable business ? 

If a man believes that tea and coffee effect 



EMPLOYERS. 115 

more evil than good, why should he lend himself 
to the distribution of these commodities ? 

Of course, it is not to be expected that a man 
who still believes these evils to be good will 
refuse to connect himself with them, or that if he 
did so, such an external, motiveless act would 
lead him up into a spiritual discrimination be- 
tween good and evil. 

But what we may reasonably expect is, that as 
soon as a man becomes aware that an occupation 
is wrong, he will at once, unconditionally and un- 
compromisingly, abandon it, and thus sever his 
material, mental, and moral relation to it. 

The man who has even only a dim perception 
of an evil, and yet continues daily to give that 
evil countenance, is more guilty, and is harming 
himself and others more, than the man pursuing 
the same course of action, who is altogether more 
degraded, consequently, on his lower plane, sees 
only a good in the evil. 

Men frequently flatter themselves that if their 
relation to an evil is such that it removes them 
from contact with its revolting or disagreeable 
effects, their guilt is thus lessened. 

A liquor manufacturer, for example, or a whole- 



Il6 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

sale dealer, feels himself morally superior to a 
grog-shop keeper. He is not obliged to witness 
drunkenness ; he could not endure that. It 
would tax his sensibilities and disturb his con- 
science, for he has a little light on the subject, 
even though he does not intend to live up to it. 
He is dispensing the evil on a capital of one 
million dollars, while the grog-shop keeper does 
so on a capital of a few hundreds. Which con- 
tributes most largely to the woe of humanity ? 
Does not the large dealer give employment, not 
only to one, but to many grog-shop keepers ? Is 
he not the first dispenser of the evil ? 

In the days of slavery in our country, a slave 
buyer always considered himself morally superior 
to a slave trader. From his position he was so 
related to the evil that he was not obliged to 
witness its most revolting effects. But who gave 
employment to the slave trader? Would the 
slave trader have bought slaves if he could not 
have sold them again ? A slave trader was held 
in utter detestation by the very slave holder who 
created and sustained him. He was despised for 
his vocation by the very employer who gave him 
that vocation. 



EMPLOYERS. I I 7 

The people, the law-makers of a country, create 
the hangman, whom they abhor. Why should 
they abhor him if he is doing right ? Say what 
we will in favor of taking human or even animal 
life, or of cruelty in any form, under any pretext 
whatever, and the fact always remains that such 
deeds are abhorrent to any one of an upright 
character ; and that they are so is sufficient proof 
to the enlightened that they are out of harmony 
with divine law, and therefore wrong. Our 
finite sense of justice never transcends that of the 
Divine Being. Neither our Christ nor any other 
christ ever taught us to commit, or to employ 
others to commit, any deeds abhorrent to an 
upright nature, much less has God, as we under- 
stand him, ever sanctioned such deeds. 

It would be totally impossible for a man in a 
moral condition above brutal selfishness to look 
with approval or even indifference upon the hor- 
rors of the gallows, the slave market, or the grog- 
shop ; yet it has been proved quite possible for 
men who class themselves among the humane to 
stand aloof, and, with closed eyes, lend their ser- 
vices to the maintenance of these evils. In what 
way is such a man morally — we do not say 



Il8 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

socially or intellectually — superior to those of 
the class he despises ? If he sins against greater 
light, he is more guilty than they. We need to 
realize, also, that our sin is a double one when we 
not only do wrong ourselves but employ others in 
the service of that same w r rong. 

Countless are the sins that we, as employers, 
are daily committing. Whenever we make use 
of anything harmful, we have, even though in- 
directly, employed some one to supply us with it. 
We have helped to create or swell the demand 
that governs the supply. We have not only done 
wrong ourselves, but we have sorely tempted 
some one else to commit a similar wrong. Every 
time a man drinks a glass of intoxicating liquor, 
he has employed men to produce it and to dis- 
tribute it ; he has employed distillers, and whole- 
sale merchants, and retail merchants in the service 
of that special evil. Every time a man smokes a 
cigar, he has employed planters, — of a weed which, 
if intended for good, has been perverted to evil 
uses, — and manufacturers, and wholesale and re- 
tail vendors of an injurious commodity. Every 
time a woman follows an injurious fashion in 
dress, she has employed in the service of evil first 



EMPLOYERS. II9 

a designer, then a fashion book editor, then per- 
haps a dressmaker. Every time she wears a pair 
of shoes that injure her health by throwing her 
body into an unnatural position, or that injure her 
feet by their unnatural form, she has employed a 
designer, and a wholesale and a retail merchant, 
and she has led some poor shoemaker into evil 
by tempting him, in his struggle for existence, to 
make what is injurious to his fellow-beings. 

Suppose that you do find an injurious com- 
modity already in the market ; if you make use of 
it, it was made for you, and such as you. 

We hear of certain rare antique laces, that 
could be made to perfection only in the atmos- 
phere of an underground room, artificially lighted, 
and damp and pestilential. How inexpressibly 
selfish were the ladies of that age, w r ho, by the 
purchase or perhaps order, of these laces, gave 
a health-destroying employment to numbers of 
tender young girls and fragile women ! 

If the women of to-day who are eager to gain 
possession of such lace were gifted with a psycho- 
metric power, they would behold in connection 
with it such visions of human woe and misery as 
would cause them to cast it from them as a 



120 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 



noisome, loathsome thing, with which they could 
not endure to be in any way related. 

While we may not at the present day be willing 
to employ our fellow-beings in just such deadly 
service as that to which we have referred, yet 
that sort of selfishness is not wholly confined to 
past ages. Have we not among our rich the 
artistically cultivated, and those who would imi- 
tate them, who are willing to pay if not to offer 
a tempting price for some exquisitely fine and 
delicate piece of work, as embroidery or painting, 
whose production is unavoidably injurious to eye- 
sight, nerve, and health ? Money is no equivalent 
for what they buy. No human being has a right, 
at any price, to the life or health of his fellows. 

We will go still further, and say that if we took 
the highest and therefore only absolutely right 
view of ourselves as employers, we would not 
desire to make use of any commodity, the pro- 
duction of which gives to others such employment 
as of necessity causes suffering to any sentient 
creature. 

What are we that we should adorn or even sus- 
tain our bodies at the cost of suffering to others 
of God's creatures ? We are supposed to be the 



EMPLOYERS. 121 

highest of his creatures ; then why should we, as 
the bird upon the worm, and the wolf upon the 
lamb, prey upon the lower order of creatures? 
Why should we carry our lust, and selfishness, 
and cruelty into deeds that outstrip theirs by 
preying upon our own species ? We do not know 
that even a starving wild beast would devour 
its fellow beast ; yet a human being, without the 
temptation of famine, will gratify his or her self- 
ish desires at the expense of the comfort, health, 
and sometimes life of a fellow-being. 

Even though we may employ others to face the 
ills of our unrighteous occupation, and ourselves 
stand aloof and remain in ignorance of its revolt- 
ing details, yet we cannot cast off the responsi- 
bility of our share in an evil to which we have 
in any way lent our aid. If we do not know that 
we are working ill, it is our duty as intelligent, 
responsible beings to learn the fact. We are not 
brought into this life to walk through it blindly. 
We are not, like the silly ostrich, to feel safe be- 
cause we have run our head into a bush, and can- 
not see our danger. Danger ever lies in wait for 
ignorance. 

Since all responsible beings must, in the inter- 



122 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

dependent state of civilized society, be employ- 
ers of others, let it be our highest endeavor to 
employ them beneficently and nobly, in accord- 
ance with divine purpose. Let us seek to give 
such employment to others as shall be ennobling 
and health-inducing to them, as well as a ben- 
efit to the community on which its fruits are 
bestowed. 

Let us pursue a similar course also to the ani- 
mals under our control. Let us not descend to 
the selfish immorality of giving a poor, innocent 
brute such occupation as interferes with his life, 
health or comfort. 

One part of the Noble Eightfold Path, men- 
tioned in the Buddhist Catechism, is Right Means 
of Livelihood. 

As we are all of us employers of ourselves, let 
us give ourselves, also, only such work as shall 
render us co-operators with the Ruling Spirit of 
the universe, in his infinitely wise plan for only 
the good of his creatures. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ARTISTS. 

Literally speaking, an artist is one who joins, 
puts together, or makes things for use or orna- 
ment. But such workers have, by usage, been 
divided into the artist, who engages in the liberal 
or more intellectual arts, and the artisan, who en- 
gages in the mechanic or manual arts. It is not, 
however, always easy to discern at what precise 
point one becomes the other. The aim of the 
artist is the beautiful, while that of the artisan is 
the useful, but they are one in purpose. They 
both minister to the needs of humanity. 

It is a great mistake to suppose that our lowest 
material wants are our only crying needs ; for the 
gratification of aesthetic and of intellectual tastes 
are needs of a higher development. Beyond both 
a material and an intellectual development, how- 
ever, we must eventually arrive at a spiritual 
development, in the process of which we are grad- 
ually led out of all bondage to the things of the 

123 



124 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

two lower planes. We who — the most advanced 
of us to-day — are just beginning to have a con- 
ception of spiritual necessities, need to be re- 
minded of the truth, that in order to advance in 
accordance with the law of our being, we must 
make our material and intellectual requirements 
subservient to those of the spirit. We must so 
regulate this material life that it shall be a help 
instead of a hindrance to us in our spiritual 
growth. 

The artist, whose province it is to contribute 
to the pleasure of his fellow-beings by appealing 
to their love of the true and beautiful, should en- 
deavor to make his offering so pure that not even 
a little evil will be worked into it to militate 
against its beneficial influence, and he is already 
beginning to learn this lesson. The superiority 
in this respect of modern over ancient art is con- 
spicuously manifest by comparing the two as they 
exist to-day in the architecture, sculpture, and 
paintings of the Old World. 

Lavishing faultless workmanship upon subjects 
that are painful or revolting is a mere prostitution 
of talent. It is pandering to perverted taste, 
when it should be the aim of the artist to redeem 



ARTISTS. 125 

the undeveloped from such error by making an 
appeal to the purest and highest part of their 
nature. 

Who, for example, was ever benefited by the 
horrible and revolting frescoes upon the walls of 
the church of Saint Stefano Rotondo in Rome, 
in which are depicted the agonies of the Romish 
martyrs ? They were doubtless intended for 
good, yet the appeal they make is so mistaken a 
one that they are productive of harm. 

We do not need to dwell upon the suffering 
one undergoes in doing right. That is not the 
point that is uplifting in any martyrdom. We 
already realize too much about suffering. What 
we need is to feel that we are to hold fast to the 
right in spite of all suffering, ever keeping our 
thoughts fixed upon truth and divine goodness, 
that lie beyond and which can help us through 
whatever may result from our steadfastness to 
truth. 

We are not strengthened in spirit by seeing 
Saint Paul beheaded, or Saint Margaret torn 
upon the rack; but rather by beholding these 
martyrs with a crown upon their heads, and by 
reflecting upon the good to humanity which they 



126 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

have compassed by their pursuance of right, not 
by suffering, which was not their aim. 

We are not uplifted by witnessing the agony 
of Jesus upon the cross ; but we are encouraged 
and elevated by beholding him glorified through 
the salvation he worked for mankind, and not by 
means of his suffering, which was only an inci- 
dent, and not a motive of the sacred drama. 

We ought no more to desire to behold these 
representations of the horrible in Roman art, 
than to desire to go back some years further into 
darkness, and witness a gladiatorial combat in the 
Coliseum. We are outgrowing such barbarities. 

By dwelling upon pain, we relate ourselves to 
a sphere of thought, the inflowing from which 
brings additional pain upon us, and weakens us 
in the pursuance of good. 

In a collection of exquisite ivory carvings in an 
old museum of Florence is represented a scene of 
the pest-house of Milan during the terrible scourge 
of 1630. In delicate and elaborate work are de- 
picted the agonies of the dying, and dead bodies 
in the process of decomposition and being de- 
voured by rats. This minute and finished work 
of art is the result of talent and infinite painstak- 



ARTISTS. 127 

ing, and must have consumed many weary hours, 
and taxed to the utmost the overstrained eye-sight 
and nerves of the artist, and all to what purpose ? 
To arouse a thought of the revolting ravages of 
disease, which is an injury instead of a benefit. 
Such a prostitution of talent only panders to per- 
verted taste. It is now happily less in demand 
than during the cruel and unenlightened reign of 
the Medici in Italy. 

But there is at the present day too great a 
readiness in art to yield itself to a public demand 
for the false, instead of a desire to elevate the 
popular taste. While it may be well for us to 
know that our ignorance and error result in loath- 
some bodily disease, yet it is not by dwelling 
upon this point that we are helped to overcome 
our destructive conditions of mind. 

In any work of art, the subject treated is more 
important than the workmanship. How often in 
Catholic countries one may see, for example, a 
poor grief-stricken woman kneel devoutly before 
a representation of that world-wide subject, the 
Virgin Mother, the emblem of pure woman- 
hood, then rise and gaze upon it, delighted 
and refreshed. The workmanship may be, and 



128 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

frequently is, so bad as to render the image ludi- 
crous to cultured eyes, yet it has served its pur- 
pose in calling forth the thought intended to be 
expressed, and the stricken woman is helped and 
comforted. 

If an artist is himself in an enlightened condi- 
tion of mind, he will study to express what will 
benefit mankind, and then his work will be sure 
to please ; for there is always in every human 
heart a love of the true, however latent that love 
may be. If it is not awakened at the first appeal, 
it will in time be sure to respond. 

There is perhaps nothing in connection with 
the Paris Salon, that annual exhibition of the 
latest pictures, more pleasing to the philan- 
thropic heart, than the spectacle, on a Sunday, of 
the grand halls thronged with men clad in the 
dark blue frock of the French artisan. It is his 
one day out of seven for leisure and rest, and the 
admission is free. It is all the better for him 
that this day is avoided by the fine people, who 
have their twenty-four hours of leisure seven days 
of the week, for he has all the more room for 
himself and, perhaps, his family. As he trudges 
from picture to picture he knows little about 



ARTISTS. I29 

workmanship ; but he does know just what pic- 
tures, from their pleasing subjects, call up in his 
mind cheerful or encouraging thoughts, and if 
they to any acceptable degree portray the thought 
intended by the artist, they have served well their 
purpose to the uncultured artisan. They have 
led him onward and upward. The quiet and 
order of the well-filled halls would impress 
themselves upon any one. The reverential long- 
ing for something higher than commonplace 
daily life affords, and the devout reverence for 
that something when once discovered, pervade 
the atmosphere and make themselves felt by the 
psychically sensitive. They generate an influ- 
ence that compares well with that of some of the 
fashionable church assemblies who at this mo- 
ment are engaged in perhaps a more external form 
of worship and feeling themselves to be superior. 

Pure works of art cannot fail to teach religion 
as well as ethics. 

In the paintings of Fra Angelico the most 
serious defects in drawing are over-balanced by the 
sublimity of his subjects and the purity of expres- 
sion in his figures and faces. The intention of 
the artist so makes itself felt in the hearts of the 



I3O THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

truly devout that there is no room for cold 
criticism. 

The unpleasant in art is sometimes admitted 
on the plea of its being true to nature; that is, to 
our present condition of mingled good and evil. 
But the true artist will be in advance of his age, 
and give us representations of only good, which 
will at some future time be the all in all. 

The grotesque in art, even when it is carried to 
the point of creating disgust, is countenanced as 
a rich play of the imagination. But why not 
image something pleasing? why desecrate thus 
the imagination ? What is there ennobling in a 
fountain in which the pure water from some crys- 
tal spring is insulted by being made to flow from 
the mouth of a grinning satyr or a nauseated 
demon? The marble may be spotless, the chisel- 
ling exquisite, but the thought expressed is neither 
pleasant nor beneficial. 

How tranquillizing it is to turn from such 
works to the beautiful specimens of Greek art 
of that classic period in which nothing ugly or 
commonplace was considered worthy of represen- 
tation ! 

It is true that the revolting in art gratifies a 



ARTISTS. 131 

certain order of taste. So does an opportunity 
to steal gratify a dishonest nature ; but it is not 
for us to encourage evil by pandering to it, 
instead of helping to overcome it by teaching its 
opposite. 

If we have talent for painting, sculpture or the 
drama, it is for us to apply that talent to the 
uplifting of humanity. If unpleasant subjects 
treated in marble or upon canvas will attract 
throngs of the public, to their detriment, so also 
will a representation of the most lofty subject 
attract them in throngs, and to their benefit 
instead of to their injury. If an obscene and 
immoral play will fill a theatre for one hundred 
nights, so also will a drama that is pure and ele- 
vating. This statement is emphatically verified 
in the immense success of that pure and elevating 
play " Little Lord Fauntleroy," which hinges on 
the beautiful working of metaphysical law. 

If our gamins in the pit or gallery will applaud 
a victory of virtue over vice, why ever offer them 
vice triumphant, or still less, why ever dwell at 
length upon pictures of vice, even though they 
may finally lead to virtue triumphant ? 

If an actor or an actress should make it a prin- 



I32 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

ciple of his or her profession to refuse any engage- 
ment that necessitated impure teaching, would 
he or she be left unemployed ? We do not think 
so. If an actor should refuse to prostitute his 
talent by demoralizing humanity, would he thereby 
be left to starve ? We do not believe it. But 
even suppose that, at one point in his career, a 
strict adherence to his principle diminished his 
income one-half; then let him diminish his ex- 
penses in proportion, and feel that a grand op- 
portunity has been given him to teach, strengthen, 
and benefit the world by his example. 

Our material needs are comparative. If we have 
enough for the simplest food, clothing, and shel- 
ter, we can live on one sum of money just as well 
as on another, if we only think so, and when the 
necessity comes we should make it our duty to 
think so. We should always regulate our minds 
in accordance with our circumstances. These 
circumstances are all of our own making, and the 
sooner we accept them rightly, the sooner we shall 
be able to make better ones. 

Many a man has failed in his duty for fear of 
bringing his family into poverty. Why should a 
man fear that his wife, or even his children, if 



ARTISTS. 1 33 

properly appealed to, will not have as much courage 
to bear adversity as he has ? As a rule, a woman 
has ten times more moral courage than a man, 
and children will follow the lead of an upright 
mother. There are full ten r men to one woman 
who sink down into discouragement, unhappiness, 
and ill-health from a loss of money. 

Whatever our work in life may be, we gain 
nothing by permitting impurity to enter into it. 

Writers form a class of artists who perhaps 
more than any others have it in their power to 
do good or harm. 

There is an old English stanza that runs thus: 

" I pity from my soul unhappy men 
Compelled by want to prostitute their pen, 
Who, like lawyers, either starve or plead, 
And follow, right or wrong, where guineas lead." 

We positively deny the existence of any such 
necessity as these verses imply. But the unhappy 
men who take such a distorted view of life are 
assuredly to be pitied for their ignorance of divine 
law. We are never forced to do evil that good 
may come to us or to any one else. 

It should be the first aim of a writer to give to 
the world pure and healthful teaching, even in 



134 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

such work as is intended only for amusement. 
If the mind of a writer is unpolluted by a desire 
for popularity or great pecuniary gain, he will 
work in harmony with truth, and his teaching 
will approach divine wisdom. An unpretending 
article or a book that benefits a few is far prefer- 
able to a more brilliant piece of work, that attracts 
the attention of thousands without benefiting any 
one. It is not the number of people who know 
of us, but the number we redeem from ignorance 
and unhappiness, that adds gems to our crown. 
In the very composition of a true work, helpful 
thought is sent forth into the realm of mind, 
thereby benefiting the world even before it has 
reached the printing-press and taken upon itself 
material form. 

This holds true in any kind of work. Any 
plan for good to humanity begins to work good 
while it is yet nothing but a plan. The very 
desire to alleviate the hardships or add to th£ 
comfort or pleasure of mankind, even in a ma- 
terial way, is a feeling that generates good to 
others. One in such a condition of mind is also, 
thereby, more sure of success in his plans, for he 
is in just the condition that relates him to that 



ARTISTS. 135 

sphere of thought towards which he is inclined, 
and from which will come the help he needs in 
order to develop or correct his vague or defective 
plans. 

If the inventor, in any line of thought, under- 
stood just how much he could be aided in his 
plans by purity of purpose and trust in the un- 
seen forces of nature, he would realize that to 
develop his own character, his own spiritual 
powers, was the foundation on which alone his 
material success could securely rest. 

There is some truth in the saying that inventors 
are always poor. But the cause of their poverty 
— of that long and anxious delay in the perfect- 
ing of their plans — lies back of their inventive 
powers, in their character. They are lacking in 
tranquillity, or in trustfulness, or in purity of pur- 
pose, and sometimes in all three, so that they are 
not open td the clear ideas for which they are 
reaching out, and which always seem almost 
within their grasp. 

To invent is to come tipon something that is not 
known in the age and country of the inventor. 
But in order to come upon something, that some- 
thing must already have existence somewhere. 



I36 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

We have reason to believe that there are in 
the universe myriads of perfected beings, who, 
having finished their material education, know 
all that can be known concerning the manipula- 
tion and controlling of matter, and that there are 
also less advanced beings of all grades, who, 
though only on the road to perfection in this 
kind of knowledge, are yet so far beyond us that 
they can give us new ideas just as soon and 
as abundantly as we are ready for them. They 
are teachers in God's employ, and it is to them 
that we are appealing when we reach out for 
knowledge of these material things, even though 
we may believe that all we need can be generated 
in our own mind. 

Let us not then clamor in vain at a door that 
we ourselves have closed. 

If we are inventors, let us endeavor to feel 
sure that we are not just trying to do something 
that will give us a patent, and render us monopo- 
lists, so that we may be able to make an unjust 
profit upon our commodity; but let us feel sure 
that we are working to redeem our fellow-men 
from some kind of bondage, or to give them some 
kind of comfort or pleasure. 



ARTISTS. I37 

When we are sure of our pure motive, then 
let us retire into privacy with our vague plans, 
and, sitting down in calmness and trust, turn our 
thoughts in the desired direction. By this method, 
we relate ourselves to a corresponding thought 
sphere that is perfectly adapted to our needs and 
our capacity. We thus open the door for more 
knowledge to come in. 

A man who has in no degree conquered his 
own lower nature might look in vain for the 
tranquillity and trust required to open wide the 
door of knowledge. We have never known a 
great inventor who was a very sensual man. 
Sensuality relates us to animal spheres, which 
could never aid us to knowledge concerning any- 
thing above the animal plane. Animal spheres 
could perhaps aid a man in becoming a monopo- 
list, for so far as a man is a monopolist, just so 
far he is, in that regard, on the animal plane. 

If a monopolist could realize that when he 
looked upon an enclosure of those animals which 
are representative of selfishness and impurity, 
and saw them pushing and crowding before their 
fellows to be the first to reach a well-filled trough, 
— if he could realize that he was gazing upon his 



I38 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

own portrait, he would desire to change his ruling 
spirit, so that he might relate himself to forces 
that would raise him to a higher plane. 

At the present day there are so many minds 
holding themselves open to knowledge concern- 
ing matter that the immediate future promises 
to be rich in marvellous inventions. 

Why should not the ancient Pompeians, for 
example, aid us to knowledge in the art of dur- 
able coloring? Why should not the wonderful 
Atlantians answer our appeal for marvels in 
mechanics? 

Both the artist and the artisan are wide awake 
in this material age, that cries out so loudly for a 
mastery over the so-called inorganic kingdoms. 
We are approaching the top of our material lad- 
pier, and we are determined to find all the utility 
and all the delight with which matter can furnish 
us. We would bend not only the wind, and the 
waves, and the blue ether above us to our uses, 
but we would also entrap and employ for our 
comfort and delight the most subtle, invisible 
forces of nature. 

The mechanical inventor forms a sort of wedge 
between the artist and the artisan. His work is 



ARTISTS. 1 39 

more brain work than hand work. He is the 
great god of the present age, which is one of 
utility even more than of profuse decoration. 
When he reaches out to invent or come upon 
some new idea, he should see to it that the knowl- 
edge he seeks will be beneficial. When he has 
perfected his plan, let him not offer it grudgingly 
to humanity by selling his commodity at an exor- 
bitant price. The knowledge he has gained by 
effort is rightfully his ; but then it is just as free 
to any one else who makes the same effort 

Knowledge is no more to be bought and sold 
than the sunlight, which is free to all who seek 
it. If a man opens a sun bath for the public, he 
does not charge for the sunlight, but only for his 
time, and outlay, and premises. He does not own 
the sun. Neither does any man have a monopoly 
of knowledge. Let the inventor then charge for 
only his time, his material, his outlay, and his 
premises. 

It is not the inventor alone who among mate- 
rial workers has it in his power to benefit human- 
ity. Even the humblest artisan or worker in any 
line whatever, who may do only what he has been 
taught to do, can and should be so conscientious 



I4O THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

that he would not be willing to carry out another 
person's injurious ideas. 

We knew of a poor shoemaker who said that 
he did not enjoy making French heels to his 
shoes because he knew they ruined feet. Now, if 
he had acted up to the light he most decidedly 
had, and refused to do what he felt to be wrong, 
what would have been the probable result ? We 
know the popular cry would be that he would be 
left to starve. But we think it quite likely that, 
on the contrary, he would have become noted as 
a maker of common-sense shoes, and would have 
had all the work he wanted, for common sense 
has not yet entirely died out of the world. All 
he would need to do in such a case would be to 
pursue the right, and trust God for results. It 
would not be necessary for him to see just what 
would come of it, for God has his own ways and 
means of working, and his plans are not always 
laid open before us. 

What would be thought of a child who dis- 
obeyed his earthly father, because he did not see 
how that father would be able to make things 
come out right unless he himself did wrong? 
Doing wrong never brings about right. 



ARTISTS. 141 

If there is not yet a demand for what is right, 
let even the most obscure artisan so ply his trade 
that he can help to redeem the world from error 
in that regard. No one can be so unimportant 
or obscure as not to exert an influence over his 
fellow-beings. There is a constant emanation 
from his spirit, whether he wills it or not, that is 
sure to influence ox flow in upon others, to their 
benefit or their injury. 

With every nail and every board that go to 
make up the sum of details in the construction of 
our dwelling, may go forth from the builder and 
his workmen such a conscientious desire to do 
their best, and so much good-will to us, that we 
find in that dwelling, from the very first, a cer- 
tain rest and comfort beyond anything that could 
be conferred by mere wood and plaster. 

We, all of us, are affected more than we are 
aware by the spirit of those who serve us. 

We know of a sensitive lady who suffered from 
indigestion after partaking of well-cooked food 
from the hands of a malicious cook, with whom she 
never came in personal contact, and, when she 
changed her cook for one superior in character, 
though inferior in skill, her ailment disappeared. 



142 THE FIVE REDEEMERS, 

Now, if evil is so subtly contagious, so also is 
good, and to a much greater degree. 

Whatever may be our occupation, let us put 
into it so much good intention and good-will to 
others, that we cannot fail to contribute our mite 
to the world's redemption. 






CHAPTER V. 

PRIESTS. 

It seems natural to mankind, in passing 
through the earlier stages of his development, to 
feel, in his religious aspirations and fears, that he 
requires some power outside of himself to take 
him into the good graces of the Almighty. He 
appears to need some one who shall offer up lip 
service, or some external sacrifice, to set down to 
his credit, and thus balance his spiritual account 
with his Deity. But as he comes into more 
light, he finds that he needs no such mediator, 
and that his only sacrifice should be the burning 
or purifying of his own inclinations. He no 
longer needs the priest, who offers him a vica- 
riously obtained salvation. But the order of 
priest he does need in his more intelligent relig- 
ious efforts is a minister or pastor, one who shall 
minister unto him spiritual things, who shall 
teach and feed him spiritually. 

A pastor or shepherd who wisely tends his 

143 



144 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

sheep will offer them such teaching as corre- 
sponds to their condition. If he is not, at the 
start, a little in advance of them, and does not 
grow with their growth, he is not well adapted 
for the work he has undertaken. 

In these enlightened days we are outgrowing 
the need of a priest whose office it is to set an 
arbitrary limit to truth. We are every day feel- 
ing more and more the need of one who shall 
widen for us our horizon, and be a co-worker with 
us in our search for divine wisdom ; one who shall 
not only hail with joy any new truth that may 
present itself, but who shall be willing to regard 
and investigate any possible truth that is offered 
him. 

We want truth more than we want church 
organizations. We do not deny the helpfulness, 
in fact, the gigantic power, of united effort ; but 
united effort to stand still does not, naturally, 
advance us like united effort to be up and march- 
ing along. 

There are some of us who think that what 
our fathers knew of truth is enough for us to 
know; but in this we are not really following 
their example ; for, in order to gain their knowl- 



PRIESTS. 145 

edge, which to-day may be ignorance, they made 
vast strides beyond their fathers. They did not 
do as we propose doing, — stand still with eyes 
closed to new truth. 

The endeavor to make truth subservient to 
sect is reversing natural order. 

An intelligent Episcopal clergyman, who was 
much impressed by some cases of spiritual healing 
that had come under his observation, and whose 
interest in this phase of truth was thoroughly 
awakened, said that he should like to learn more 
about it, but that if he thought it would conflict 
with any of the beliefs of his church, he would 
drop it like a hot coal. Is the Episcopal church, 
then, greater than truth ? Is any church greater 
than truth ? Does any church include and con- 
fine the whole of truth, or is the underlying 
truth that may be found — even though as a 
kernel in a hard shell — in any church but an 
infinitesimal part of universal truth ? We hope, 
and we have every reason to believe, that should 
the above-mentioned clergyman be brought again 
into the sphere of the Episcopal church one hun- 
dred years hence, he would find it, by the drop- 
ping away of errors, and the addition of new 



I46 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

truths, changed beyond recognition. Perhaps 
the very so-considered essentials to which he 
clung so tenaciously would rank among ludicrous 
superstitions. 

The truths contained in the science of spiritual 
healing, or in any other science, can never con- 
flict with the truths of any church, for truths can 
never conflict with one another ; but a distorted 
view of truth may conflict with a correct view of 
truth. If we have any reason to suspect that 
possibly our views of truth may be distorted, 
should we not desire to straighten them out 
rather than cling to them, and, by looking 
through them, distort everything else ? 

The desire in the custodians of church doc- 
trines to close the door upon all new truth, not 
only keeps their people in darkness, but it stunts 
their own growth and circumscribes the field of 
their usefulness. They pity or despise as a ren- 
egade, one who, knowing more to-day than he 
knew yesterday, changes his view of truth. 

This order of priest may say that if it is a door- 
keeper s office to keep a door closed, he cannot 
be expected to hold it open, which is true. If, 
however, more light were desired, church doc- 



PRIESTS. 147 

trines would not be so narrow and exclusive. 
They would present open doors to the light, for 
it is men who make doctrines, and not doctrines 
who make men. God made religion, but man 
made churches. 

Jesus said, " Feed my sheep "; he did not say, 
" Build fine temples for worship." He did not 
establish, or even suggest church organizations 
to fix boundary lines to truth. In feeding his 
sheep we are to minister to them in such a way 
that their hearts and minds will open to light, 
and they will be strengthened and refreshed. 
Let a pastor take an interest in his flock individ- 
ually. Let him draw especially near to the so- 
called black sheep, for they need him more than 
the white ones. 

The humblest and dullest of a flock are fre- 
quently blest with an intuition that tells them 
whether their minister is a mere expounder of 
doctrines or a live redeemer ; whether he is work- 
ing for his own interest or for the benefit of his 
flock ; in sum, whether he is counterfeit or real. 

There are at the present moment many noble 
workers within the pale of the church organiza- 
tions, who are live exemplars of the truths taught 



148 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

by Jesus, instead of fossilized custodians of effete 
church dogma, and they are striving to break 
down the walls of bigotry and ignorance that 
hem in the sect to which they belong. 

We need more of this kind of ministers. We 
need true brothers, who, in ministering holy things, 
would be willing to lift their flock from the foulest 
mire if need be ; for the clean hands that do the 
bidding of a pure heart cannot become sullied, as 
they have no affinity with what is unclean. We 
need a brother who is not only humane, but who 
is wiser than we, — who is a prophet as well as a 
priest. 

If we needed priests to work vicariously for us 
when we were in the wilderness of material de- 
velopment, now that we are emerging from dark- 
ness into light, we need prophets who will wisely 
counsel us in working out our own salvation. 
We need seers of spiritual visions, illuminated pro- 
gressive teachers, — not those who will merely see 
a fatalistic rock before us, but those who, seeing 
the rock, will, by their unerring compass, bring 
our vessel round that rock and safely into port. 
We need teachers who will give us all of truth 
that, at any certain moment, we are able to receive. 



PRIESTS. I49 

Although there may be a stage in our advance 
at which we will stand at the precise point of some 
certain church creed, yet we think that all creeds 
and all doctrines should be adopted with a reser- 
vation. We should say that to-day we believe 
thus and so, but to-morrow, if we progress as it 
is our duty to endeavor to do, we may believe 
something quite different. 

A true minister will lead his people onward 
instead of barring up the way to prevent their 
advance. The giving of intellectual teaching, 
however, is the smallest part of the work of a 
pastor. Humanity cannot thrive on only dry 
doctrines and narrow interpretations of scripture. 
We need some one to draw near to us in spirit 
and help us when we are in sin, sorrow, and sick- 
ness. 

There is a lamentable lack of this needful 
ministry from those appointed to the sacred 
office. 

We have heard many say that they always 
sought counsel and comfort in their physician, for 
somehow he seemed to come nearer to them 
than their minister. A true physician always will 
come near to his patients in both mind and spirit ; 



I50 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

but then why is the priest not also a physician ? 
In the olden time the two offices were one ; why 
are they now separated ? 

Preach the gospel and heal the sick, was the 
command of Jesus to his followers, who, in obey- 
ing only half of that command would seem to 
perform only half of their duty. 

Our spiritual teacher should be the one above 
air others to heal us of our bodily infirmities, 
since it is spiritual knowledge and the practice of 
spirituality that alone can raise us to a condition 
of security in bodily health. 

A true minister does not go to the bedside of 
a patient and tell him what death is, but he tells 
him what life is. He tells him that he is alive 
and always will be alive, whether he leaves his 
material body or not. 

Into whatever sphere we may enter, we are still 
alive. Ever-shifting matter may change its form, 
but the spiritual power that governs these changes 
is a living power. There is life everywhere. 
The whole universe is full of life, and health, and 
strength. 

The minister, by turning the attention of his 
patient to the everlasting life of spirit, has done 



PRIESTS. 151 

more for the restoration of his body than could 
be accomplished in any other way. 

In his wisdom, as a true physician, he does not 
fix a time for the patient to leave the material 
body, and thus induce all dominating minds to 
contribute towards the verification of that pre- 
diction. He knows that only God can foretell 
such an event. On the contrary, by reanimating 
the spirit, even when it seems to be losing its 
hold of the sinking body, he will many times re- 
call the scattered life forces, and enable that spirit 
to continue its mundane work, which it had well- 
nigh cut short, perhaps by its very hopelessness. 

Such a minister, such a true healer, would not 
urge a patient to prepare, in his last moments, for 
a life in spirit, for he would know that the man's 
previous life, as a whole, was the only prep- 
aration that could be made. He would know 
that a hasty repentance of leisurely pursued evil, 
a repentance founded perhaps on fear or self- 
interest, would, at best, be but a starting-point in 
the right direction, and would save no one from 
reaping that which he had sown. 

We know of ministers who, in cases of great 
suffering, pray at the bedside of the patient, that 



152 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

God, if it be his will, may relieve the suffering or 
remove the sufferer from this life. Now we do 
not think that we need to feel any anxiety or 
doubt lest God will not do what is best, and we 
have nothing whatever to do with the issues, life 
and death, as they are called. We are not even 
to desire one way or the other. Our whole effort 
should be directed to the strengthening of the 
weak spirit, and thus we invigorate and reanimate 
the body, or, perhaps, enable that spirit to pass 
tranquilly on to a higher condition. We have no 
responsibility whatever concerning the way in 
which our good work results. 

We have no right to wish to cut short an 
earthly discipline. The last hours of an earthly 
life, even when full of inevitable anguish, may be 
doing a work for the spiritual advancement of the 
sufferer that will tell upon his career throughout 
all eternity. 

The last term of a student at school, even 
though full of arduous tasks, is frequently said to 
be of more value to him than years of his previous 
schooling ; and who would wish to deprive him of 
this last advantage by removing him from school 
because his way had become less smooth ? 



PRIESTS. 153 

There is only one step between the desire to 
remove a sufferer from this life, and a doctors 
desire that leads him to permit a deformed child 
to pass out of this life as soon as he enters into it. 
Then there is only another step between this 
position and that taken by the physically and 
artistically cultured ancient Greeks, when they 
deliberately put to death an infant whose body 
was not hygienically and perfectly moulded in 
accordance with their models of the human form. 

The survival of the fittest is God's responsi- 
bility, and not ours. 

The minister, who is also a healer, will persist, in 
spite of all hindrances, in seeing nothing but life 
for a patient. Though he may be called to a bed- 
side surrounded with poisonous drugs and imple- 
ments of destruction, in an atmosphere filled with 
fears, and false beliefs, and even antagonism to 
truth, yet he will valiantly hold fast to his idea of 
life, spiritual life, which is a thousand times more 
potent than all the so-called obstacles in the world. 
He will endeavor silently to teach the patient, by 
the force of his own knowledge, that there is not 
one physician for the body and another for the 
soul, but that the healing of the soul includes that 



154 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

of the body, as the shining of the sun includes the 
quickening of all organized forms upon the earth. 

A patient needs to be taught a more excellent 
way in order to prefer it But if, as a spiritual 
healer, our most earnest and conscientious teach- 
ing seems lost, if the good seed we sow appears 
to fall on utterly barren ground, even then w r e 
shall have done our best, and our all, and we may 
rest assured that any other line of effort would, 
as an ultimate effect, have been less and not 
more powerful. 

The Romish church, in all ages of its career, 
has been full of examples of healing power, con- 
joined with priestly office, and although falsified 
and made to redound to the glory of the church, 
instead of to the glory of spiritual science, it has 
accomplished marvellous work in the healing of 
bodily infirmities, and has thus drawn its children 
more closely into the fold. How much greater 
work might then be done by one who, in his 
sacred priestly office, truthfully presented this 
spiritual method of healing, with no thought of 
church organization, or of self, and only intent 
on his mission in its entirety, as preacher of the 
gospel and healer of the sick ! 



PRIESTS. 155 

Jesus, in commanding his disciples to preach 
the gospel, did not tell them that in doing so they 
were to see to it that they stood up in fine pul- 
pits, before richly furnished, monopolized pews, 
in costly temples, that were open to even the 
monopolists only four or five hours out of all the 
seven days of the week, and were never open to 
all who chose to enter. But he did tell them to 
go forth among all nations and preach the gospel 
to every creature, which, even though not taken 
in a fully literal sense, would not seem to enjoin 
upon them the maintenance of an aristocracy in 
religion. If, however, we find it expedient to have 
handsome temples of worship, whose atmosphere 
is supposed to be filled with purity, strength, and 
regenerative power, why not let them daily stand 
open, so that the most degraded of God's children 
may enter, and, without money and without price, 
bathe in such healing magnetism ? It is the 
most degraded who most need regenerating, and 
they are quite as likely to need it on a week-day 
as on the Sabbath. 

The closed doors of Christian churches are a 
shame to a Christian community. There is no 
word that is so frequently and grossly misused as 



I56 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

the word Christian. It is employed to cover the 
most unchristian thoughts and deeds, — deeds dia- 
metrically opposed to the teachings of the Christ 
signified. 

Does a minister of the gospel think that, if he 
really followed the precepts and example of Jesus, 
his Christ, instead of only pretending to do so, 
does he think that if, for example, he refused to 
preach to hired pews, he would be without a pul- 
pit to preach in ? 

We know of a noble example in the Episcopal 
church — perhaps the most exclusive of churches 
— who refused to preach to monopolized pews, 
and he was not without a pulpit to preach in, and 
the poor and the rich were seated side by side 
before him. 

If there is any place in the world in which the 
false barrier between rich and poor should be 
levelled away, it is in a temple consecrated to the 
God of all humanity. If there is any individual 
in the world who should be at the service of the 
poor, equally with the rich, it is one who pre- 
tends to be a follower of Jesus, the Friend of all 
mankind. 

If it were the custom for ministers to preside 



PRIESTS. I57 

over plain houses of worship, and depend upon 
the power of spiritual attraction to fill them, we 
think that the measure of their success would be 
something of a criterion of their fitness for the 
work undertaken. Then, if any minister preached 
to empty seats, it would be because he had 
nothing to give that was wanted in that commu- 
nity ; it would be because, however grand his elo- 
cution, he had no message to deliver, and it should 
conclusively prove to him that he had either mis- 
taken his calling or was in the wrong place. 

Under the present system of church organiza- 
tions, the people are ministered to by a fine tem- 
ple of worship, a fashionable location, the choice 
music of a choir, or by association with a certain 
preferred class of society, or by anything, rather 
than by the love and wisdom of their pastor. 
Either the love and w r isdom are not there, or 
those who come under the ministry by means of 
a false attraction are too benighted to discover 
them. 

We Protestants might turn back and learn 
something from the Romish church, whose 
errors we so self-righteously feel we have left 
behind us. In turning away from their errors 



I58 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

we have also turned away from some of their 
virtues. 

In the old Catholic countries a church stands 
open on week-days to the rich and poor alike. 
Its furnishings are not so perishable and sumpt- 
uous that they cannot be daily used, although its 
decorations are generally so artistic and enduring 
that they are a lasting means of comfort and edu- 
cation to the people of all social grades. When 
the so-called lower classes shift their dwellings 
and crowd in upon the neighborhood of a church, 
or when it becomes surrounded by busy trade 
centres, that church does not take up its silken 
robes and walk away. That church is not then 
sold for a theatre, that its organization may move 
to a more fashionable quarter. 

Who would not be surprised, on going to Rome, 
for example, to find St. Peter's torn down and its 
people building a new temple in the Via Nazio- 
nale ; or, on going to Paris, to find Notre Dame 
converted into a theatre, and its people flocking 
over to a new edifice near the Arc de Triomphe ? 

Of course, the church, as a church, is not wholly 
responsible for the present condition of things 
among us, for the condition of a church falls back 



PRIESTS. 159 

upon other social conditions. These other social 
conditions have become unnatural by the artifici- 
ality and unrest of our upper-tendom, who are the 
ones to support fine churches. Why must the 
rich, and those who imitate the rich, be forever 
shifting their dwellings, and then expect their 
churches and public buildings to follow in their 
erratic course ? The demands of trade could not 
turn them out of their dwellings or their streets if 
they did not desire to go. If trade could not find a 
place in one quarter, it would turn to another, as 
it does in the city of London and other substantial 
cities that retain their characters for centuries. 

Has the pastor of a church nothing to say to 
his people on this subject ? Can he not endeavor 
so to minister to them that their souls will be 
filled with the peace that brings contentment? 
Can he not give them strength to overcome the 
worldly emulation and struggle to seem rather 
than to be ? Of course, he cannot so minister to 
them if he is not above that plane himself. The 
tranquillity which spiritual knowledge and living 
can impart is needed even more by the rich than 
by the poor. 

As an argument against opening our churches 



l6o THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

to the poor and uneducated, it has been said that 
they would not avail themselves of the privilege 
if they had it, that they would not understand a 
refined discourse, and would not feel at home in 
refined surroundings. Well and good ; then there 
is no harm done in making them the offer. But 
if they would not feel at home in one church and 
under one sort of ministry, they would be quite 
likely to do so in another church, and under 
another ministry, if the choice were left open to 
them, as it should be. Then there is a universal 
misjudgment concerning the understanding of the 
so-called uneducated. We have known many 
among the unlettered and unschooled, who were 
so spiritually unfolded that they could seize in- 
stantly upon a spiritual truth in however scholarly 
a form it might be presented to them. They 
were better educated in the highest sense than 
the majority of mere intellectual scholars. In- 
deed, it is sometimes pitiful to witness the utter 
stupidity of the merely intellectually developed 
when presented with some high spiritual truth. 
They simply have no trained faculty by which 
they can lay hold upon it. It is to them as color 
to the blind: it does not exist. Its vocabulary 



PRIESTS. l6l 

has no meaning for them; its essence finds no 
response within them. 

It is not for us to say who shall be able to com- 
prehend spiritual truth, whether the beggar in 
rags or the prince in purple and fine linen. As a 
minister of sacred things, freely offer spiritual 
truth to all, and those who can be benefited by 
your rendering of it will be attracted to you by a 
law that does not depend upon artificial social 
customs. 

An immense field for good is open before one 
who has undertaken the mission of Christ. Only 
a small part of his work lies within the walls of 
his sanctuary. A pastor has charge of his flock, 
not only on the Sabbath day, but on all the seven 
days of the week ; and since upon him does not 
devolve the redeeming work for a whole nation 
or even for a whole city, he can enter into the 
individual career of his flock. It is within his 
province to learn the trend of every life placed in 
his keeping. A true redeemer of his race seeks 
out the sick, the sinful, and the sorrowing, as one 
who, however conscientiously he may fulfil the 
duties of material life, takes a paramount interest 
in the things of the spirit He is one who never 



1 62 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

recoils from the most degraded sinner, for he 
knows that all error is but ignorance, but a turn- 
ing out of the true road into toilsome by-paths by 
those who are groping along in darkness. He 
only endeavors to shed light all along the w T ay. 
He sheds such spiritual illumination upon the 
poorest that they will realize their power for good 
to others, and will feel rich, for no one can possi- 
bly be too poor to benefit his neighbor. In the 
same spirit of love and charity he will approach 
the rich, for they are frequently in greater dark- 
ness than the poor. 

We are sometimes inclined to pity persons on 
account of their uninterrupted worldly prosperity, 
for it seems to be their undoing. But this is 
only a seeming; the real cause of their destruc- 
tion is within themselves, and not in anything 
external, whether poverty or riches. This truth 
the real minister enjoins upon them. He does 
not waste his time in lamenting either the pov- 
erty or riches of his people ; but he teaches them 
how to make a good use of their advantages, and 
turn to good account either poverty or riches, 
so that it may prove a blessing instead of a 
hindrance. The fashionable avenues and the 



PRIESTS. 163 

crowded lanes equally need the visits and the 
ministration of a true redeemer. 

The individual redeeming work of a pastor 
could not be accomplished by one over-crowded 
with official church duties. If a man in any 
calling whatever undertakes more work than he 
can do, his work is not well done. One w T ho does 
nothing but deliver sermons from a pulpit or desk 
may be a preacher, but he is not a pastor. 

If there were fewer church meetings and con- 
ventions, less wrangling among ministers, dea- 
cons, priests and bishops over non-essential church 
doctrines, or over the defection of a brother from 
arbitrary dogma, and more practical religion, 
more individual healing and teaching among the 
sick and sinful, the world would more speedily 
become enlightened by clerical effort. 

A spiritual-minded clergyman will be quite 
likely at length to outgrow some of the bigotry 
of his sect; he will be quite likely to learn to 
place a higher interpretation upon the truths 
of his church. He will perhaps believe more 
in God as a creator and parent, and more in 
Jesus as a redeemer; but he will believe in a 
different, a more rational, a more helpful way, 



164 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

than the one in which he was taught, and which 
was, at the time, sincerely accepted. He has 
simply grown. Can a plant help growing when 
its conditions are such as to bring upon it the 
spiritual life-force it requires ? Can a human 
being help growing when by his own effort he 
brings upon himself the right conditions ? 

The clergyman who is growing is perhaps dis- 
turbed at the change in himself, which means 
nothing but progress. He feels that he ought to 
leave his people because he is not in every point 
one of them. 

When we consider how impossible it is that 
any two members of the same church should 
interpret or assimilate its doctrines in precisely 
the same way, we know that a minister could not 
possibly, in every non-essential, be one with all 
his people ; and it is not necessary that he should 
do so. We think there are many among the 
clergy, and more among the laity of the Episco- 
pal church, who do not, for example, accept lit- 
erally the fourth of the thirty-nine articles estab- 
lished by bishops, clergy, and laity as absolute 
truth. But an enlightened clergyman has some- 
thing more profitable to talk about to his people 



PRIESTS. 165 

than the physical body of the historical person, 
Jesus, the Christ. Such points are thrown into 
the background of non-essentials by the glorious 
and helpful truths he taught, which truths would 
be in no wise belittled, were he even proved to 
be a character of fiction, instead of a real histor- 
ical person. 

Why should a clergyman ever leave a certain 
denomination in which he is doing much good, 
unless his life and his necessitated utterances have 
to him become an untruth ? 

Those who are attracted to you, and continue 
to desire your ministry, need you just as long as 
you in all sincerity have anything to offer them ; 
and, if those appointed over you, thinking more 
of church dogma than of truth, depose you from 
office while in the midst of your usefulness, so 
much the worse for them. But they cannot cut 
off your usefulness, for the whole world is your 
field. If one pulpit closes to you, another will be 
quite likely to open to you. Moreover, as spirit- 
ual food does not necessarily proceed from pul- 
pits, and as any spot on earth may become your 
forum, you cannot be prevented from preaching 
the gospel. As the sick and sinful are always 



1 66 THE FIVE REDEEMERS. 

with you, and you can always draw near to them, 
you cannot be prevented from healing your fel- 
low-beings of their infirmities. Thus, in spite of 
all anathemas, and excommunications, and curses 
of whatsoever nature, from man-made ecclesiasti- 
cal authority, your consecration to divine work 
cannot be revoked, and you will be sustained in 
your God-made office of preacher and healer. 

Although the true consecrated priest or min- 
ister is the highest and most significant of those 
redeemers who walk along with us in our daily 
life, yet we must not leave all the preaching and 
healing for him to do. We must realize that 
we can be priests to one another. Still further, 
we must realize that we are each our own priest. 
We have each of us a divine nature illuminated 
with sacred wisdom, which is, by God's law, 
placed in charge of our lower selves. Let us 
not, in our ignorance, depose that priest from 
office, for it is above all other redeemers. It is 
the foundation on which all other redeemers 
build. Let us listen to its unerring precepts. 
Let that lower self become illuminated by its 
quickening rays, so that we shall each of us be a 
priest forever, after the order of Melchisedec. 



Practical Metaphysics, 



By M. J. BARNETT, 



A CONCISE STATEMENT OF THE PRIN- 
CIPLES OF METAPHYSICS. 



This work, on account of its clearness of 
expression and its practical value, has been 
adopted as a text book in teaching the science 
of metaphysics or spiritual healing. It is recom- 
mended also to the sick and afflicted who have 
no access to teaching other than through litera- 
ture, and who find it, what it professes to be, 
the divine science of healing made practical. 



RETAIL PRICE, - $LOO. 



Sent by Mail, Post-paid, on Receipt of Retail Price. 



HEALTH FOR TEACHERS. 



By M. J. BARNETT. 



An Application of Metaphysics to Daily Life 
and Work. 



This practical little work is of great value to 
teachers in public and private schools, while it still 
further applies to brain workers of every class. Tracing 
the effect of the mind and spirit upon the body, it offers 
the true spiritual remedy for disease ; and, as prevention 
is better than cure, it teaches how to acquire such condi- 
tions of mind as shall protect one in health and thereby 
avoid the necessity of curing disease. It is of special 
service to both healers and patients. 



RETAIL PRICE, 25 CENTS. 



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JUSTICE A HEALING POWER. 



By M. J. BARNETT. 



A Work enforcing the grand lesson of Pure Meta- 
physics that Virtue is a remedy for disease. 



A little treatise on the power of Justice to exert 
a beneficial influence over spiritual and material con- 
ditions. It regards Justice in its psychical aspect as a 
cause, and traces it down to effect in external mani- 
festations in the body. Its lesson is enforced by a nega- 
tive as well as a positive view of the subject. It is 
found beneficial in the class-room and office of the healer, 
as well as in the home of the patient. 



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The New Biology. 



By M. J. Barnett. 



The Life Principle Traced Back to its True 
Origin in Spirit. 



The various practical lessons in the science of true 
thinking and true living, set forth in this book, renders 
it a valuable addition to the many useful works by the 
same author. Applying this knowledge, as it does, to 
all conditions of our earthly existence, and furnishing 
numberless apt illustrations, it appeals to a large class 
of the public. 



RETAIL rRIlE, $1.00. 



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